# 43 Money laundering, the Christian Mafia, and an email to ‘the Black Bitch’ (Part Two)

...continued on from 'Money laundering, the Christian Mafia, and an email to 'the black bitch' (Part One)

So, where does ‘the black bitch’ fit into the Christian Mafia story ? Who is the ‘black bitch’?

The following anecdote is a little off-topic but not so far off that I need to make too many excuses for including it here. It is a story well known within the NGO community and the subject of plenty of hushed cocktail banter. You will not read about in the newspapers, however, for reasons that will become apparent.

I cannot mention either the name of the NGO (a household name) or the name of the central character in the anecdote (another household name) because both are extremely litigious and would have a gaggle of lawyers descend on me like a ton of bricks if I mentioned them. The Christian Mafia does not want its dirty linen washed in public.

It is a story that touches on the foolishness of hitting the ‘reply’ button when sending an email without checking to see precisely whom you are replying to. It is also a story that highlights the arrogance of NGO’s untroubled by the precepts of transparency and accountability to be found prominently displayed on their websites; NGOs who are Lords of their multi-million dollar empires, subject to no independent external monitoring or assessment; laws unto themselves.

The story is long. I will cut to the chase. A black former employee of this particular NGO found herself involved in a minor dispute with it about the level of pay she was entitled to if she were to be re-employed by the NGO. An arrogant woman by all accounts who felt that she was entitled to a higher wage and a more elevated position within the heirarchy than the NGO was offering.

In the course of this minor dispute the CEO of this particular NGO sent an email to someone else within the NGO in which he referred to the former employee as a ‘black bitch’. Alas, he copied this email to the ‘black bitch’ herself! You can guess what happened next. Yes,  he was sued. It cost his NGO $70,000 to keep this out of the courts, out of the public eye and to enable business as usual to proceed with no-one the wiser apart from those in the NGO world who were privy to it or heard about it on the grape vine. That $70,000 to keep this man’s name off the front pages of newspapers was made up of small tax-deductible donations made by Australians who believe, because this NGO has a huge marketing department, that does it only good work around the world and is as pure as driven snow.

The stories about this man’s doltish behavior are legion but, as I mentioned earlier, you will never hear of them because the NGO he heads up (also in the business of saving souls for Jesus Christ) is notoriously litigious. The fatal combination of Spin Doctors, lawyers and a huge marketing section guarantees that the general public will never know what actually goes on in this or any other cashed-up NGO.

Indeed, the Sultans of Spin employed by the Christian Mafia will go to extraordinary lengths to keep you, the generous donor or sponsor, laboring under major illusions (delusions!) as to how your tax-deductible dollars are being spent. If you have made a donation to Citipointe church or to the Global Development Group some part of your  tax-deductible dollar is now going towards paying the lawyers and Spin Doctors who have been employed to break my legs. I am speaking metaphorically, of course. They do not want to break my legs. They want me in jail. They want me banned from coming to Cambodia again. They want me to shut up and not say out loud what everyone in Cambodia knows – that too many of the Christian NGOs in Cambodia are there to proselytize, to rescue Buddhist children from their heathen parents and turn them into God-fearing Christians convinced that their parents will be going to Hell for engaging in Buddhist ceremonies, for having Buddhist beliefs rather than accepting Jesus Christ as their Saviour. And, please excuse me for belabouring the point, but these human rights abuses are being paid for with tax-deductible Australian dollars. The Christian Mafia will insist otherwise but any and everyone associated with the NGO world in Cambodia knows that most Australian Christian NGOs are in the soul-saving business. It is contrary to AusAID rules but, if my experience is anything to go by, senior AusAID officials are either asleep at the wheel or turn a blind eye to the blatant proselytizing that takes place in Cambodia and, I suspect, in other 3^rd world countries where evangelical Christians are breaking up families and saving souls with the assistance of Australian tax dollars, despite this:

“Evangelism (also called proselytism and missionary work) is the practice of attempting to convert people to another religion or faith…Tax-deductible funds cannot be used for evangelistic purposes nor for missionary activities. Missionary activities include evangelism but also extend to activities designed to build up the knowledge and faith of believers including theological training and study of worlds of religious wisdom such as the Koran, Torah or Bible. The building and maintenance of places of worship are also ineligible.

Guidelines governing AusAID’s partnership programme with NGOs similarly exclude evangelistic activities: “Approval will not be provided for activities which subsidize evangelism or missionary outreach…” AusAID funds must be used “to assist in strengthening an organization’s or a community’s development capacity of socio-economic situation…” and not to strengthen the ‘religious witness’ of a church or religious organization.

Under the very specific sub-heading of ‘Evangelical Activities’ the explanatory notes state: “AusAID and NGOs recognize and agree that AusAID funds are not to be used for programming that is designed to convert people from one religious faith or denomination to another or from one political persuasion to another. Nor should AusAID funds be used to build up church ecclesiastical or political structures except in circumstances where those structures are specifically designed to provide relief and/or development assistance. In this context, church, ecclesiastical and political structures include not just infrastructure, but could extend to training or organizational activities.”

# 42 Money laundering, the Christian Mafia, and an email to ‘the Black Bitch’ (Part One)

Money laundering (traditional):

“The process whereby the proceeds of crime are transformed into ostensibly legitimate money or other assets.”

Money laundering (Christian evangelical): 

“The process whereby legitimate money from tax-deductible donations finances the crime of child-stealing.”

Make a tax-deductible donation to an Evangelical Christian NGO in the business of ‘rescuing’ children in the third world and there’s a high probability that this money will go to the break-up of their family, to the indoctrination of the child into the NGO’s particular brand of the Christian faith and to alienation of the child from her family (nuclear and extended), her culture and her traditions.

Genocide without bloodshed. Financed with Australian tax-deductible dollars!

So it is that well-meaning Australian donors and sponsors get a warm inner glow from having helped ‘the poor’ in the third world whilst in reality being complicit in multiple human rights abuses.

There are good NGOs and bad NGOs. Tara Winkler’s ‘Cambodian Children’s Trust’ is a good NGO. Tara understands that it is essential to help materially poor and disadvantaged children within a family and community context.  Citipointe’s  ‘SHE Rescue Home’ is a bad NGO – not just because of the way in which the church acquires girls like Rosa and Chita (fraud), not just because it exploits these girls for financial gain (pretending that they are ‘victims of human trafficking’) and not just because the church is involved in the indoctrination of these girls into Citipointe’s warped version of the Christian faith but because Citipointe believes that the breaking up of Cambodian Buddhist families is essential if the daughters of these families are to be recued from the Hell that awaits their parents for having not accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour!

The problem is that the bad NGOs like Citipointe’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’ can break Cambodian law with impunity, can breach the Code of Conduct they have signed up for with Australian Council for International Development and be unaccountable Lords of the little empires they create for themselves in corrupt dictatorships such as the one that prevails in Cambodia. And who is going to call them to account? The answer, unfortunately, is no-one.

If you dare to say out loud what all in the non-denominational NGO community in Cambodia speak about in hushed tones you will have the Christian Mafia on your back - a mafia that will, like all mafias, use any and every ploy it can to discredit you, to shut you up – threats of defamations suits, threats to have you arrested and jailed, accusations of profiting from prostitution, posting porn on the internet and most recently (in my case) the charge that I have blackmailed a member of the Mafia (Citipointe church) by threatening to defame it.

The fact that there is no evidence in support of Citipointe’s charge is not a problem in Cambodia – where evidence, facts, the truth are of little consequence in court proceedings. As for the issuing of warrants, summonses, providing the accused with evidence of his crimes, these are details the Cambodian judiciary dispenses with when its client is a member of the cashed up Christian Mafia.

All this would be laughable if it were not for the fact that this Christian Mafia  honestly believes that it is acting in the best interests of the children it steals and indoctrinates into whatever brand of the Christian faith it is that the mafia member NGO practices. The parents of these children are, after all, Buddhist heathens, ‘non-believers’ who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior! The CM is doing the children a huge favour in rescuing them from the hell into which their parents will be pitched upon death. Yes, a literal hell. The Pentecostals believe that God has set aside a fiery burning Hell as the final resting place for non-believers such as…such as The Dalai Lama…

The Christian Mafia behaves in this way in the 3^rd world because it can get away with it. And make money in the process. Third world countries usually have corrupt officials in high places that can be paid to turn a blind eye to breaches of the host  country’s laws. And there are plenty of poor parents whose desperate need to find food to put in the bellies of their hungry children will go along with whatever nonsense these God-botherers spout.

“You want me to speak in tongues? No problem, if that’s what I need to do to fed my kids.”

If I could not feed my kids, if I desperately wanted them to have the education I missed out on as a result of my poverty, I’d become a Pentecostal too, allow my kids to become Pentecostals. But if this particular sub-branch of the Christian Mafia tried to take my kids away as Citipointe did -  by lies, deceit, stealth, fraudulent contracts etc - I’d do what Chanti did: kidnap my own daughter. When Chanti ‘kidnapped’ Rosa from the church that had stolen her, Citipointe called the police – who then, obligingly ‘rescued’ Rosa, aged six, from her mother. That Citipopinte had no legal right to have removed Rosa in the first place is a detail of no interest to Cambodian police. The reality is that the police in 3^rd world countries are badly paid and do the bidding of rich and powerful NGOs. (Chanti’s ‘punishment’ for having ‘kidnapped’ her own daughter was to have her visitation rights reduced to 2 hours per month, or 24 hours per annum. Five years later, Chanti and Chhork’s visitation rights are close to zero.)

If it were not Pentecostals stealing children from poor Cambodian families, but Pimps tricking the parents into giving up their daughters and selling them into prostitution, all hell would break loose. There would be a mad rush of NGOs in falling over themselves to be first in line to rescue the kids from the sex trade. If it is just Pentecostals stealing children well, that’s OK, because, you know, Christians are good people who have the best interests of children at heart. And, hey, surely these kids are better off getting three meals a day in a Christian Mafia institution than being malnourished in the village their family and community lives in? Right?

Wrong. If the Christian Mafia was working in accordance with true Christian values it would be helping not just the children of poor parents but the parents themselves, the extended family, the community. A truly Christian Mafia would recognize the sanctity of the family and the value of building strong ties between the families and their communities such that they can become self-sufficient and no longer in need of the aid that the Christian Mafia is offering.  The aim of these Christians is not self-sufficiency, of course but winning souls for Jesus Christ. And we, in Australia, support this indoctrination of Buddhist children into the Christian faith though tax-donated dollars given to Citipointe church and other Christian NGOs.

I doubt very much that a compassionate loving God has too much interest in whether or not the people receiving aid from NGOs are Pentecostals or not. A truly loving compassionate God would applaud the generosity of spirit that even a non-believing Heathen – Muslims, Hindus, Jews etc - might manifest with his or her actions in helping the poor and dispossessed. (Tara Winkler, for instance.)

The God of the Pentecostals is a mercurial egomaniacal sadist who punishes (into eternity)  those who refuse to bow before him and acknowledge Him as the only deity worthy of respect and worship. And He gives the Pentecostals a blank cheque to make as much money as possible in the process, so that this money can be used in other parts of the 3^rd world to break up families  and deliver young souls into the bosom of his boundless love!

There are, of course, many good NGOs – NGOs that actually do, in the real world, on the ground, in communities, what they claim in their glossy brochures and online to be doing to alleviate poverty. (again, Tara Winker’s ‘Cambodian Children’s Trust’ is a shining example). At the other end of the scale there are those who, realizing how easy it is to fool big-hearted donors and sponsors, take full advantage of the free-for-all that is the Cambodian NGO industry to milk it for what it is worth. Citipointe church fits into this latter category – stealing the daughters of materially poor Cambodians and presenting them to donors and sponsors as ‘victims of human trafficking’.

“Be careful, James, you can’t write that,” I can hear my friends cautioning me. “Citipointe will sue you.”  “No, they won’t,” is my usual reply, “, at least not in Australia because a defamation suit would draw public attention to the church’s scam. A defamation suit would also result in the church being obliged, in an Australian court of law, to provide evidence that they acquired custody of Rosa and Chita legally. And the church did not. Citipointe knows it did not. The Global Development Group (funding Citipointe’s proselytizing activities in contravention of AusAID rules and the ACFID Code of Conduct) knows that it did not. The Australian Embassy (and hence DFAT) knows that it did not. The Australian Council for International Development knows that it did not. The minister for Foreign Affairs knows that it did not (or should know) but in true Emperor’s New Clothes style all are maintaining their silence in the vain hope that the caravan will pass and the barking dog, me, will be barking impotently into the night sky.” If none of the above actually ask to see the MOU that gave Citipointe the legal right to remove the children, all can plausibly claim in the future, when the truth comes out (as it will) that they did not know. At this point the matter will be handed over to the Spin Doctors to absolve all those responsible for turning a blind eye to this child stealing to appear blameless.

Such is the world we now live in – a commitment to transparency and accountability being nothing more or less than slogans spouted by Spin Doctors in the vain hope that we stupid members of the Australian public will buy whatever nonsense they feed to us.

And so it is that Citipointe church has arranged to have me tried in Cambodia in absentia (last week) and for my sentencing to occur on 2^nd April. The problem confronting the church is this: “Which serves our purposes best – to see James jailed and banned from coming to Cambodia any more or to do all we can to see to it that he does not receive a custodial sentence?”

…to be continued…

# 41 letter to Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop re Citipointe's illegal removal of Rosa and Chita, dated 19th March 2014

Chita (left) and Rosa (right) - young members of the new Cambodian 'Stolen Generation' seen here with their mother, Chanti, during a rare home visit in 2013.

The Hon Julie Bishop

Minister for Foreign Affairs

House of Representatives, Parliament House


Canberra ACT 2600                                                                           

19^th March 2014

Dear Minister

It would seem my letters have been relegated to the ‘Too Hard’ basket or, perhaps, ‘Of No Interest’ basket. Perhaps because the children that were illegally removed by Citipointe in 2008 are Buddhist, brown-skinned and poor and their parents do not live in a marginal seat! As for the church that illegally removed the children, they are fair-skinned Australian Christians who vote and may even be financial contributors to the Liberal Party!

Please excuse my cynicism but it is pretty much the only response available to me when no-one from the Minister of Foreign Affairs down is prepared to ask Citipointe to produce a copy of the MOU that the church claims gave it the legal right to remove the daughters of materially poor Cambodians from their families in mid-2008.  

Why, given the simplicity of the action required (photocopy/scan and send) has it not been possible, despite five years of asking, for the parents (Chanti and Chhork) to acquire a copy of the MOU?  The answer is simple: there is no MOU that gave the church the rights it  exercised in 2008. Citipointe has broken Cambodian law. Simple as that.

More importantly, in the present context, is the question:

“Why has no-one from your office, no-one from AusAID, no-one from the Australian Council for International Development asked Citipointe church to produce a copy of this 2008 MOU?”

Could it be that if the church is never asked to produce it, those who should have asked for it (your own office included) can claim with some plausibility, when the truth comes out (as it will), they had no idea that Citipointe had, in accordance with Cambodian law, illegally removed the girls.

On the other hand, if Citipointe is asked for a copy of the MOU and it becomes apparent that the church had no legal right of removal, a veritable Pandora’s Box of questions arise which could be summed up as:

“Why, this past five years, has Citipointe church been able to get away with the illegal removal of Cambodian children in 2008 when Mr Ricketson, on behalf of the parents (Chanti and Chhork) has been pointing out the illegality of the church’s actions in dozens of letters?”

I imagine that a gaggle of DFAT and AusAID Spin Doctors may be able to turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse but it would not be an easy task.

best wishes

James Ricketson

# 40 letter to Hon Julie Bishop, Australia's Foreign Minister, dated 17th March 2014

The Hon Julie Bishop

Minister for Foreign Affairs

House of Representatives, Parliament House


Canberra ACT 2600

17^th March 2014

Dear Minister

It is only three days since I last wrote to you but, just as three days can be a long time in politics, so can it be in the life of an investigative journalist. Each day new facts emerge, new leads to be followed reveal themselves. Over the weekend, for instance, allegations have been made that a young woman was raped by Brett Cowan, killer of Daniel Morecombe. And what church was Brett Cowan attending on the Sunshine coast at the time? The Christian Outreach Centre. And who started this church? Pastor Leigh Ramsey and her husband, Mark. And what was the reaction of the Christian Outreach Centre to the Brett Cowan rape allegation? To cover it up. Were Pastors Leigh Ramsey and her husband involved in this alleged cover-up? I have no idea at this point. It is an avenue to be explored.

There is a certain amount of urgency in getting answers to the questions I have asked you, given that Citipoint church has arranged for me to be tried in absentia in Cambodia and for me to be sentenced on 2^nd July. I still do not know what the charges are and no evidence has been presented to me in support of them. I not informed by summons or warrant that I was due in court last week – such details being of no consequence when rich and powerful interests of the kind that Citipointe represent bring their influence to bear on the Cambodian judicial system.

However, were a copy of the MOU that Citipointe maintains the church entered into with the Cambodian ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008 were to appear, and were it to be found that it did not give Citipointe the right to remove Rosa and Chita, this would be a game-changer. It would be abundantly apparent that Citipointe had broken Cambodian law and that Pastor Leigh Ramsey and her co-conspirators should be charged in accordance with Article 9 of Cambodia’s ‘Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation’.

Public exposure of Citipointe’s criminality would be hugely embarrassing to the church and to the Global Development Group but the church will never be charged in Cambodia because of the special arrangement that exists between Citipointe’s Nicole Roberts (along with her husband, Troy) and the Cambodian police. It is Nicole Roberts who had made accusations about me on 30^th Oct 2012 (in the total absence of any evidence) that led to my conversation with Judge Phou Pov Sun a couple of weeks ago. For more information about Nicole Roberts’ relationship with the police, go to:

http://rawimpact.org/ourprojects

There is, of course, no MOU that gives Citpointe and the Global Development Gropup the legal right to remove children as the church did in 2008. What Citipointe will present, if pressed, is an MOU the church entered into with the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs in Nov 2009 – 16 months after Rosa and Chita were removed. In Cambodia, of course, retrospective permission to steal children is easy to organize – as is any and every human rights abuse an NGO chooses to engage in. And do the parents, Chanti and Chhork, have a copy of this Nov 2009 MOU? No, of course not. This is Cambodia. The fate of their daughters is none of their business. Their futures are to be determined by men and women sitting around a table in a board room in Brisbane, in conjunction with corrupt public servants in the Cambodian government and with the tacit approval of incompetent public servants within AusAID and the Australian Council for International Development.

In defense of corrupt Cambodian public servants they are corrupt because the whole society is. There is no way that anyone can survive under the corrupt regime that is the supposedly democratic Hun Sen government, without being corrupt. A Judge can’t live on his official wage and needs to have it topped up. The police can’t live on their official wage and need to top it up. School teachers can’t survive of their official wage and need to top it up with contributions made each day from students – contributions that are beyond the financial capacity of many poor Cambodians. Then there are the garment factors workers who can’t survive on $95 a months. And what happens to them when they go on strike demanding a living wage of $160 a month - a wage acknowledged by the government is the minimum needed to survive? The army is brought in to shoot to kill. And which country provides substantial military aid to Cambodia. Right, Australia does. In fact, this year, Australia will contribute around $100 million to the propping up of this corrupt dictatorship.

Quite apart from the illegality of Citipointe’s removal of Rosa and Chita from their family, there is the question of these girls’ indoctrination into Citipointe’s particular brand of Petecostalism. Some relevant quotes:

“Evangelism (also called proselytism and missionary work) is the practice of attempting to convert people to another religion or faith…Tax-deductible funds cannot be used for evangelistic purposes nor for missionary activities. Missionary activities include evangelism but also extend to activities designed to build up the knowledge and faith of believers including theological training and study of worlds of religious wisdom such as the Koran, Torah or Bible. The building and maintenance of places of worship are also ineligible.

Guidelines governing AusAID’s partnership programme with NGOs similarly exclude evangelistic activities: “Approval will not be provided for activities which subsidize evangelism or missionary outreach…” AusAID funds must be used “to assist in strengthening an organization’s or a community’s development capacity of socio-economic situation…” and not to strengthen the ‘religious witness’ of a church or religious organization.

Under the very specific sub-heading of ‘Evangelical Activities’ the explanatory notes state: “AusAID and NGOs recognize and agree that AusAID funds are not to be used for programming that is designed to convert people from one religious faith or denomination to another or from one political persuasion to another. Nor should AusAID funds be used to build up church ecclesiastical or political structures except in circumstances where those structures are specifically designed to provide relief and/or development assistance. In this context, church, ecclesiastical and political structures include not just infrastructure, but could extend to training or organizational activities.”

A few months after Citipointe church stole Rosa and Chita from their family, the church gave the enclosed photo to Chanti and Chhork. This was at a time when Citipointe was relying on its fraudulent 31^st. July 2008 ‘contract’ to justify the legality of its actions. This was at a time when Rebecca Brewer was telling both the parents and myself, on the basis of this fraudulent document, that Rosa and Chita would stay with the church until they were 18. This photo, of young Rosa displaying her silver cross to the Citipointe photographer, was intended to send Chanti and Chhork a strong message. “Rosa is no longer your daughter. She is ours. She is no longer a Buddhist, she is a young Pentecostal.”

Citipointe church  should be stripped of its tax-deductible status. So should the Global Development Group – complicit in this child-stealing scam. There should be a totally independent investigation into how and why it is that NGOs with such obvious religious agendas are able to proselytize in Cambodia and other 3^rd world countries. Such an investigation cannot be carried out by the Australian Council for International Development as this organization has revealed itself to be deeply compromised and incapable of arriving at conclusions based on facts and evidence.

best wishes

James Ricketson

# 39 Letter to Global Development Group lawyer, Billie Jean Slott, dated 16th March 2014

James Ricketson

316 Whale Beach Road

Palm Beach 2108

Sydney, Australia

jamesricketson@gmail.com

Billie Jean Slott

Legal Advisor

Sciaroni and Associates No 24, Street 462

Sangkat, Tonle Bassac

PhnomPenh                                                                

16^th  March 2014

Dear Billie Jean

It is now 17 days since I received your Feb 28th email.

Eternal optimist that I am, I held out hope that you might be genuinely interested in ‘the truth’ about how it was that Citipointe church acquired custody of Rosa and Chita in 2008. In my naivety I thought you might look at the facts, the evidence (a lawyers’ job, surely!) and realize that in July 2008, and particularly after 11^th August 2008, Citipointe had no legal rights at all to be detaining Rosa and Chita contrary to the wishes of their parents.

I presumed, foolishly, that you would relay this information to the shocked and horrified Global Development Group Board that has been funding Citipointe’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’, at which point the board would respond in the only ethical way possible – to sever GDG’s ties with Citipointe church.

It is clear from the events of the past week that your job is not to seek and find the truth but to find whatever loopholes you can to justify or explain away the illegal removal of Rosa and Chita. And if that fails to use a corrupt judiciary to bring whatever pressure to bear on me that is necessary to prevent the truth from being made public. And the truth is this:

In July 2008, Citipointe church, with the blessing of the Global Development Group, illegally removed Rosa and Chita from their family.

You are now an integral part of (maybe even a necessary of driving part of) a conspiracy of silence surrounding the 2008 Memorandum of Understanding that Citipointe church claims to have entered into with the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You must do whatever it takes to guarantee that this document never sees the light of day. And so, of course, must Citipointe church, the Global Development Group board, the Australian Council for International Development,  AusAID and the Department of Foreign Affairs. The release of this MOU would reveal the illegal nature of Citipointe’s removal, the complicity of GDG and the incompetence of senior personnel in AusAID and DFAT who, if they had been doing their job properly, would have exposed Citipointe’s scam years ago.

There is no 2008 MOU that gives Citipointe the right to remove children from their families without the parents’ consent. You will and must agree on this by now as you have read the MOU. But there is another MOU, isn’t there – one that you have seen a copy of but which Chanti and Chhork have been denied access to. This is the Nov 2009 MOU that Citipointe entered into with the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs.

I have not seen this document and know nothing of its contents. I have no idea what justification Citipointe was providing to MoSAVY for the continued detention of Rosa and Chita at a time when Chanti and Chhork had a home (a houseboat) and two income streams – these indisputable facts recorded by my camera in Nov 2009.

More importantly, nor do Chanti and Chhork have any idea of the contents of this MOU. They have no idea why MoSAVY thought, in Nov 2009, that their home was not a fit place for their children to live. They have no idea what, if any, their rights of appeal were/are regarding this decision made by MoSAVY. They had no idea  then, and have no idea now, what they needed to do to get their daughters back. The only certainties in their lives were that Citipointe kept (a) promising that their daughters would be returned soon and, when this did not happen over a period of years (b) that it was up to MsSAVY to decide when re-integration was possible or desirable. Given that no-one from MoSAVY ever visited Chanti and Chhork to see how they were faring, Citipointe could continue with its scam for as long as it liked. And it has – for close on 6 years now.

My question for you, Billie Jean, is both a legal and an ethical one:

“Between 11^th August 2008 and Nov 2009 -  a period of 16 months – did Citipointe church have a legal right to be detaining Rosa and Chita against the express wishes of their parents, Chanti and Chhork?”

I am not a lawyer, but I am also not a fool. Clearly Citipointe had no such right between 31^st July 2008 and Nov 2009. The Cambodian law that should have applied to Citipointe’s actions at that time is Article 8 Cambodia’s ‘Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation’.

Article 8:Definition of Unlawful Removal

The act of unlawful removal in this act shall mean to:

1)      Remove a person from his/her current place of residence to a place under the actor’s or a third persons control by means of force, threat, deception, abuse of power or enticement, or

2)      Without legal authority or any other legal justification to do so to take a minor person under general custody or curatoship or legal custody away from the legal custody of the parents, care taker or guardian.

You know, as a lawyer, that the means whereby Citipointe  got Chanti to put her thumb print on the fraudulent 31^st. July 2008 ‘contract’ in order to remove Rosa and Chita involved “deception, abuse of power or enticement.” One element of this deception involved telling Chanti that it was LICADHO she was entering into an agreement with. Chanti knew of LICADHO and had no reason to distrust what she knew to be a human rights organization.

You know, as a lawyer, that Article 9 of Cambodia’s ‘Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation’ is quite clear as to what the punishment for “deception, abuse of power or enticement”  is:

Article 9: Unlawful removal, inter alia, of Minor

A person who unlawfully removes a minor or a person under general custody or curatorship or legal custody shall be punished with imprisonment for 2 to 5 years.

If the Cambodian courts were administering Cambodian law (as opposed to NGO law) Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Rebecca Brewer and Helen Shields would be in court and facing possible 2 – 5 year jail sentences of ‘unlawful removal’. They will not be. It will be me who is in court facing the accusation that I have blackmailed Citipointe by threatening to make public the illegality of the church’s actions. And you are now part and parcel of this use of a corrupt Cambodian judiciary to prevent the truth about Citipointe from emerging.

Given that the Global Development Group is implicated in this unlawful removal it is now imperative that the GDG board find some way of spinning GDG’s complicity in this crime in such a way as to shut me up, shut me down, do whatever it takes to discredit me. And so, enter Billie Jean Slott. “”Billie Jean, what can we do?” I can hear the GDG board asking. Well, one thing that can be done is to charge me with attempting to blackmail Citipointe, make sure that no summons or warrant is served on me, make sure that I am not appraised of the contents and that I am not in the country and hope that my non-appearance in court will be viewed as either an admission of guilt or as contempt of court. Then, just as this legal farce has been arranged by Citipointe and GDG, it is likewise easy to arrange whatever sentence you might think appropriate to shut me up, to shut me down.

There are at least two possible outcomes on 2^nd April. One is a custodial sentence for myself. This would not really suit GDG’s purposes, however, as it would draw attention to the criminality of Citipointe church’s actions in a way that Global Development Group desperately wants to be kept from public view. Stealing the brown-skinned children of materially poor Cambodians is one thing; arranging for the arrest and jailing of a white Anglo-Saxon Australia is something quite different. Questions would be asked.

The other alternative is for Citipointe/GDG to arrange with the Cambodian judge to have the matter quietly dropped. This would result in the media having no further interest in Citipointe’s criminality and probably only writing a small story, buried deep in newspapers. The caravan would move on and it would be back to business as usual for Citipointe and GDG.

If I were advising Citipointe /GDG I would be suggesting this latter option. The only danger inherent in it is that there may be a journalist who smells a rat and continues to ask Citipointe/GDG to produce the MOU from 2008. Your job then, I guess, would be to find ways of not producing the document – wearing the intrepid journalist down until s/he gives up. Your mission accomplished, the Global Development Group could then dispense with your services until such time as another filmmaker/journalist starts to ask difficult questions and needs to be shut down.

My hopes that you might be a lawyer with integrity have been dashed, Billie Jean. You have certainly found the right country to be practicing in!

best wishes

James Ricketson