Citipointe's offer of money to Chanti and Chhok on receipt of the letter I wrote to the church earlier today

Dear Leigh

Further to my letter of earlier in the day:

http://citipointechurch.blogspot.com/2013/12/citipointes-legal-choices-1-fight-tooth.htm

Shortly after I sent it to you Chanti received a phone call from Citipointe offering her $800 to build a toilet for the family home. This is the first time in five and a half years that Citipointe has  made an offer of this kind. For five and a half years you have steadfastly refused to provide any assistance at all to the family.

As it happens, I have already given Chanti and Chhork $800 to buy a badly needed toilet. When Chanti informed Citipointe of this your church then offered to buy a generator and to have a well dug in their yard to provide them with clean water.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that these offers of money, coming after five and a half years on no help at all, are directly related to Citipointe now having to deal with the court documents delivered to you yesterday.

Chanti and Chhork arrived in Phnom Penh half an hour ago and I have conducted an interview with them, with a competent translator. Both Chanti and Chhork made it quite apparent, in their interviews, that they were not interested in the money being offered to them by Citipointe; that they simply wanted their daughters returned to them. Rosa and Chita are not for sale to anyone – including Citipointe church – for any price.

As you know, Leigh, because I told you when first we met, Chanti turned down $10,000 that had been offered to her a decade or so ago to effectively sell Rosa. As with all things, you completely underestimate Chanti. No matter how much money you offer her she will turn it down and insist, as she has this past five years, that her daughters be returned to her.

Whether Citipointe’s decision to start throwing money at Chanti and Chhork is in the hope that they will drop their court case or whether it is because you hope that there is a sum that they will not be able to say no to, and so retain custody of Rosa and Chita, remains to be seen.

The behaviour of your church continues to be lacking of anything even vaguely approaching the values of the Christian faith you purport to follow. You have broken Cambodian law by illegally removing Rosa and Chita, have broekm Cambodian law by detaining them fir five and a half years against the express wishes of their parents and are now hoping that you can, with money, either save the church from public embarrassment or secure the custody of Rosa and Chita until they are 18 years old.

You are a disgrace, Leigh Ramsay.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Citipointe's legal choices (1) Fight tooth and nail in court to retain custody of Rosa and Chita or (2) return the girls to their family as their parents, Chanti and Chhork, have been requesting for five years.

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152                                                                                 

6th Dec. 2013

Dear Leigh

Now that the court papers have been served, Citipointe’s legal options now are basically these:

(1) Have your legal representative appear in court to try to convince the Judge that your church has, this past five and a half years, retained custody of Rosa and Chita in accordance with Cambodian law – despite the dozens of times their parents, Chanti and Chhork have asked for their daughters’ return to the family home.

In pursuit of this objective you have in your possession a second ‘contract’ that you got Chanti to sign in 2008. This is the ‘contract’ (let’s call in contract #2) whose existence I have been asking about for five years now and whose existence you have neither confirmed nor denied. Only a few days ago did LICADHO inform us of its existence. Chanti does not, of course, have a copy and has no idea what it contains.

It is this contract (not the worthless 31^st July 2008 contract) that the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ has presented to SISHA as evidence that Citipointe has the right to hold Rosa and Chita until they are 18 – as announced by Rebecca Brewer  in an email to me more than five years ago.

Before rushing to court with contract #2 you might want to run it by your Cambodian lawyers to see if it gives you any of the rights you have claimed this past five years – the right, primarily, to hold Rosa and Chita contrary to their parents express wishes. If the court decides that contract # 2 is as worthless as contract #1 (31^st July 2008) Citipointe has a problem. On what legal basis has the church  been detaining Rosa and Chita?

If Citipointe was acting illegally and if the court makes a determination based on the facts, you, Rebecca Brewer, Helen Shields and Nicole Robertt should, in accordance with Cambodian law, be found guilty of ‘illegal detention’ and serve time in jail. Even if you do not wind up in jail, it is hard to see how the Royal Government of Cambodia could allow to remain in the country an NGO that has been found guilty of ‘illegally detaining’ the children of a poor Cambodian family.

(2) Release Rosa and Chita back into the care of their family immediately.

There are plusses and minuses to both options. 

Option (1) looks promising on the surface. Citipointe can, after all, call upon the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ to backup the legality of the church’s actions as it has been doing this past few months – transmitting this information to me through SISHA. Superficially attractive though this might appear to be, it is a tactic that will only work if contract # 2 gave (and gives) Citipointe the right to hold Rosa and Chita indefinitely. When the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ checks this document with a lawyer (as it should have done months ago!) it will find that there is, in fact, no Cambodian law that enables Citipointe to detain Rosa and Chita regardless of what contract # 2 says; regardless of what Chanti thought she was signing with a thumb print.

If the investigating police with ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ try to use this document to justify the legality of Citipointe’s actions they will look very foolish in court.

Of course, this being Cambodia (recently voted the most corrupt country in Asia and one of the most corrupt in the world) anything is possible. Perhaps Citipointe could even make good Pastor Brian Mulheran’s threat to have me arrested, jailed and banned from coming to Cambodia again! How much would that cost?  No, you wont do that. That was an empty threat, just as your threats to sue me were empty and just as your legal threats against the Sydney Morning Herald were just the bluff and bluster of Christian bullies.

Chanti would, of course, prefer option (2). She desperately misses her daughters and wants them back immediately - as has been the case this past five years. Chhork also.

My main concern with option (2) if that Citipointe will find itself with two beds to fill and so be on the lookout for another family (perhaps two) that the church can hoodwink into giving a daughter up temporarily - only to find, too late, that the church intends to take full control of the girl’s life, to alienate her from her family and indoctrinate her into Citipointe’s warped version of the Christian faith. Two other girls will find themselves pawns in Citipointe’s sponsorship and donation scam as your church seeks to present them to the world as victims of something other than poverty; something other than the greed and avarice of your church. And who will act as an advocate for these two girls?

If I am wrong about Citipointe’s threats being but the bluff and bluster of bullies you have more than enough in this letter (and many others), published online, to commence defamation proceedings against me in either Cambodia or Australia or both. I would be delighted to be sued by Citipointe as this would force your church to be transparent and accountable for its actions in public and enable your sponsors and donors to learn how their money is spent in Cambodia to, amongst other things, steal children from poor families.

best wishes

James Ricketson

for Pastor Leigh Ramsay after delivery of court documents relating to the 'illegal detention' of Rosa and Chita by Citipointe church

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152                                                                                 

5th Dec. 2013

Dear Leigh

Following on from my letters of 29^th Nov and 3^rd Dec.

Last week, when Chanti, Chhork and myself met with LICADHO, Chanti was in very good spirits, having yet again been told by Citipointe that Rosa and Chita would be returned to her soon. Then, when the LICADHO representative spoke with Citipointe on the phone and was informed that the girls would not be returning home, Chanti’s smile was wiped from her face. The following day she was ill with a fever. There was nothing medically wrong with her. My own feeling was that, yet again, her heart has been broken by Citipointe’s false promises.

It was at this point that I decided, finally, to pursue Citipointe through the court systems of Cambodia and Australia – starting with Cambodia.

This morning I drove to the Citipointe centre at Sangkat Boeng Tompun, Khan Meanchey to deliver a court document to Ms Nicole Robertt (attached), whom Chanti and Chhork are suing for ‘illegal detention’. The relevant part of this document reads, in a less-than-perfect translation:

          Regarding to the above subject and reference, I would like to inform His Excellency Mr. Prosecutor that the facts of this issue are as follows: I have two children—one is PHOUN ROSA, female, aged 11, and the other one is PHOUN THIDA, female, aged 9. In 2008, I took the two children to seek temporary shelter with Citypoint organization because at that time I was very poor. In 2012, I had been working very hard to earn my living that I had quite better living standard enabling me to raise and send them to school like other children. I have been to the Organization to ask my children back many times, but the Organizagtion refused to give.

          His Excellency Mr. Prosecutor! In the name of their parents, I have been missing them very much and wanted them to come back to live with me. As for the two children are concerned, they also wanted to come and live with their parents. Obviously, every time when I went to meet them, they would cry by asking me to take them out from the Organization so that they can come and live at home.

          His Excellency Mr. Prosecutor! I saw that this act done by the Organization is a human illegal detention because:

-    My two children have no willingness to live with this Organziation anymore.

-    The thing that the Organization took my two children for raising is not a normal adoption or acted as a legal gurdian. Now the two children need to re-unite with their parents, but this Organization used detentive measures. This act breaches article 1020, 1023, 1024 of code of civil procedure.

          Actually, the law does not allow any one to take minor children to raise in such ways. This act is an explicit breach to code of criminal proceudre in article 253. 

          Regarding to this case, I would like to make the following request:

1. Punish Mr. Nicole Robertt in accordance with laws.

2. Request the above named person to give the two children back to me to take care of them personally.

As above mentioned, Please His Excellency Mr. Prosecutor, deliver judgment as I requested above at your favorable decision. 

Given that the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ had no interest at all in the evidence I had to present to it and given that the Ministry of Social Affairs has taken no interest in the matter, I will introduce the audio-visual evidence that I have which will leave little doubt in the mind of an impartial court as to the sequence of events that led to Citipointe not only illegally removing Rosa and Chita from the care of their family but of retaining custody for five years after the parents, Chanti and Chhork, expressly asked that their daughters be returned to them.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Official Complaint against Citipointe for 'illegal detention' of Rosa and Chita lodged Court

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152                                                                                                 3^rd Dec. 2013

Dear Leigh

Following on from my letter of 29^th Nov.

Chanti and Chhork have signed their official complaint and it will, in the next day or two, be presented to the court. In brief, the document accuses Citipointe of having illegally detained Rosa and Chita since 26^th July 2012. The person named in the document as Citipointe’s representative is  Nicole Roberts.

As you know, Chanti and Chhork have been asking for the return of their daughters for five years now – as my many letters to you and my blog bear witness. However, it will be much easier to prove the illegality of Citipointe’s actions in reference to the document presented to the church in July 2012, signed by Chanti and Chhork’s village chief – Y Noeng. You have a copy of this legal request in Khmer but, in the interests of transparency, here it is in English, appended below:

Given that Citipointe is determined to retain custody of Rosa and Chita regardless of either Cambodian law or Chanti’s and Chhork’s wishes or human rights, I imagine that the church’s next move will be to shift responsibility for its refusal to return the girls as requested to either the Ministry of Social Affairs or to the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’. Either or both will then be obliged by the court to present whatever evidence they have in support of the proposition that Rosa and Chita should not be returned to their parents.

As you know, or as Citipointe’s lawyer must have pointed out to you, even a second contract between Chanti, Chhork and Citipointe (kept secret this past five years!) does not give the church the right to hold Rosa and Chita contrary to their parents’ wishes.

In relation to the so-called ‘investigation’ conducted by the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’, even if there had been one in which actual evidence played a role, this was not commenced (at my request) until May this year – ten months after Chanti and Chhork’s Village Chief’s request for the girls to be returned. What reason will Citipointe present to the court for its refusal to respond to Mr Y Noeng during this 10 months?

The Ministry of Social Affairs seems to have no interest whatsoever in this matter as the Minister has never once responded to any correspondence from myself or Chanti. Given how often Citipointe shifts the goalposts this could change, of course, when Citipointe realizes that that the ‘Anti Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department’ is not going to provide the church with the cover it requires without opening up a veritable hornet’s nest of questions.

You have treated Chanti and her family with contempt this past five and a half years Leigh. You have not provided her with one dollar in assistance, have not offered any help even when she was sick and, earlier this year, had pneumonia when 8 months pregnant. Instead, you have exploited her labour by paying her 25 cents for a product your church sells for $3 and by raising money from donors and sponsors by presenting Rosa and Chita to the world as ‘victims of human trafficking’.

I look forward, in court, to hearing what justification Citipointe chooses to present for the illegal detention of Rosa and Chita.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Kingdom of Cambodia

Nation Religion King

efg

REQUEST FOR CHILD CUSTODY

We, BUN CHHAK, male, aged 27; and the wife YEM CHANTHY, aged 26, currently residing at Rented House No. 619G, Group 4, Samaki Village, Sangkat Russey Keo, Khan Russey Keo, Phnom Penh, who are the parents of the two children: PHUN ROSA, female, aged 10; and PHUN CHITA, female, aged 8

Respectfully submit to

CITIPOINTE Organization 

Subject     : we would like to have custody of the above-named girls

We, the parents of the two girls, would like the CITIPOINTE Organization to give us the custody of the two girls, so that they can come back to live together with their parents.

Therefore, CITIPOINTE, please make a favorable decision.

I wish everyone in CITIPOINTE good health and long-term success.

Have seen and certified that the thumbprint on the right side has truly been affixed by BUN CHHAK, the father, and YEM CHANTHY, the mother. Date: 26 July 2012 Chief of Samaki Village (Signed) Y NOENG

Date: 26 July 2012

Right Thumbprints of the Parents

             Father                       Mother

    (Thumb printed)         (Thumb printed)

       BUN CHHAK       YEM CHANTHY