Will Citipointe allow Rosa and Chita to attend their aunt's wedding?

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152

14^th Feb 2013

Dear Leigh

It comes as no surprise to me that you have not responded to my letters of 6^th, 10^th or 12^th Feb. Indeed, it would surprise me if you did. You clearly hope that by burying your head in the sand like an ostrich and hoping the annoying Mr Ricketson will just disappear, that he will disappear. Alas, here he is again asking you questions you do not wish to answer and making available to the public (through his blog) just what Citipointe’s modus operandi is in Cambodia, as opposed to what the church claims, on its very very misleading website, to be doing here.

Chanti has asked me yet again, as her advocate (you have a copy of the relevant document signed by Chanti) to ask you to allow Rosa and Chita to accompany herself and the rest of the family to Chhork’s sister’s wedding this coming Sunday – 17^th Feb. As you know, Chhork is Chanti’s husband and step-father to both Rosa and Chita. You have never before allowed Rosa and Chita to attend any family functions and I don’t imagine that you are going to have a change of heart this time around. God forbid that these two young Cambodian girls be exposed to Cambodian tradition and culture in the form of their aunt’s wedding! What deleterious effect might this have on Citipointe’s cult-like determination to turn Rosa and Chita into evangelical Christians in the Citipointe mold if they were to attend a Buddhist wedding ceremony!

Nonetheless, I do want to put this formal request in writing  since miracles do occur and perhaps you are not totally incapable of behaving like a proper Christian and will allow ALL of Chanti’s children to be present for their aunt’s wedding!

As always I will also publish this letter on the internet so that readers of my blog (growing in numbers weekly) can be in no doubt at all that Citipointe has deliberately, and over a period of years, sought to alienate Rosa and Chita from their family, from the Buddhist beliefs of their community and from Cambodian culture in general. A blatant human rights abuse – one of several practiced by Citipointe church.

It is worth mentioning here for new readers of my blog that Chhork, as a tuk tuk driver, earns between $30 and $35 a week or $1,500 a year. This figure is supplemented by small amounts of money earnt by Chanti’s mother, Vanna, in the weaving of bracelets to sell to tourists and with money earnt by Chanti selling scarves, sarongs and other artifacts to tourists, earning roughly $500 a year.

$2,000 is not a lot of money for a family to live on for a year but is considerably more than many Cambodians must subsist on.

The family income is supplemented by myself in the following manner:

Annual rent:                                                                                                    $840

Annual school fees for James and Srey Ka @ $270 per annum                     $540

One $40 bag of rice per month                                                                       $480

Medical expenses for the family per annum                                                  $300

This brings the family’s annual income  up to around $3,600.

Now consider how much it costs to keep one girl in Citipointe’s She Rescue Home. You will not reveal such costs but based on figures you once had published on your website and my knowledge of the cost of living in Cambodia, including rent, it costs in the vicinity of $500 a month to keep one girl in the Rescue Home.

So, it costs Citipoine around $7,200 per annum to keep Rosa and Chita in the She Rescue Home. Or, to put it another way, Citipointe spends double Chanti’s family income to support Rosa and Srey Mal each year.

Or, to put it yet another way Citipointe church could save itself $3,600 a year by returning both Rosa and Chita to their family and making a contribution of $3,600 to helping support the entire family. Alternatively, Citipointe could save most of the money is spends keeping Rosa and Chita in an institution, making only the following contributions to the family income:

Family medical expenses (including Rosa and Chita)                                   $500

School fees for four children (including Rosa and Chita)                              $1,100

In short, for the sum of about $1,500 a year Citipointe could be making a significant contribution towards making this family self-sufficient, whilst providing all of Chanti and Chhork’s children with the education they are going to need to lift the entire family out of poverty. Instead, Citipointe has chosen to make no contribution at all towards the welfare of the whole family, no contribution at all to the education of James and Srey Ka, no contribution at all towards the medical expenses required by Chanti to have a tumour removed from her wrist or, this past week, to be cured of her pneumonia.

Even at this late stage, and I mean today, Citipointe could (1) Allow Rosa and Chita to accompany their family to their aunt’s wedding this coming Sunday, (2) Promise to return Rosa and Chita to the care of their parents and (3) Offer to make a small contribution towards the ongoing support for the entire family over the next 10 or so years. $15,000, spread over 10 years, in addition to my own contributions and the money that the three breadwinners in the family can earn (Chhork, Chanti and Vanna) could completely transform this family’s fortunes and give all the children a chance in life that their mother, father and grandmother did not have as they were growing up.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Chanti's new home & an invitation for Citipointe to help ALL of the family.

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152

12^th Feb 2013

Dear Leigh

The Lord works in mysterious ways. A few weeks ago I spoke with a close woman friend of mine who practices a form of Christianity very different to the one you practice. She is familiar with Citipointe church’s ongoing human rights abuses. She writes:

“Our church are supporters of children in the Philippines in Malaybalay city and the pastor has never ever been involved with these practices. What they do is spend the mission’s money on supporting whole families stay together and spread the message of love through providing family's with all they need .”

Paramount in her church’s efforts to help poor people in the Philipingpines  are (1) The church’s determination to keep families together and (2) Respect the religious beliefs of those the church is helping. Citipointe does neither of these things, believing as it does that your church’s interpretation of the bible, of Christ’s teachings, gives you the right to break up families and to force the young girls in your care to become Christians. The arrogance is breathtaking!

My friend, having heard of the plight of Chanti - denied access to her own children and, of course, of Rosa and Chita denied meaningful access to their own family - wrote to me:

James

As you know I am a devoted Christian undertaking ministry and leadership training. It goes against all Christian principles to deny Chanti assistance .

The bible states (Christian) bible if a man asks for help you must not refuse him/ her. The principles of the bible are of love compassion, giving , forgiveness these are called fruits of the spirit. It seems this church is not adhering to it's foundational Christian principals. Also a church that steals children to profit themselves would be classed as fraudulent here in Australia amongst even the poorest of churches.

I am as a Christian surprised at the heartlessness of not allowing Chanti’s children to return home with their mother. To be without their mother and siblings I predict that this church will create more long term suffering on these children long term as they have and are being  denied the very basic of human rights and that is to be bonded with their true family.

As white settlers and the catholic churches  in Australia 100 years ago who systematically removed aboriginal children from their parents

have created a lost generation who have become welfare dependent .

James, as a Christian, I ask you, on what basis will they not return Chanti’s children? If it is financial then they have no excuse. You and I can support Chanti and her children.

My friend is far from wealthy but she has a very kind heart and offered, first of all, to take on complete financial responsibility for the education of all of Chanti’s children. In a conversation with me about her generous offer it was decided that between the two of us we would buy a house for Chanti in the provinces so that she can live close to both the family of her mother (Vanna) and the family of her husband Chhork. As you know, it was extreme poverty that led to Chanti and Vanna moving to Phnom Penh 18 years ago to make a living begging. They have wanted to return to the provinces for close to 20 years and it is fitting that they should return home now.

Yesterday, on a trip to Srey Veng to visit both Chanti and Chhork’s family’s for the Chinese New Year celebrations, we found a house for the family to live in that is for sale – just a few metres from the house of Chhork’s father and mother. In the next week or so my Christian friend and I will buy it. It is situated 100 meters from a school that all of Chanti’s children of school age can attend – including Rosa and Chita.

When Chanti and Chhork are the owners of their own house and have been re-integrated back into the community they both come from, Citipointe will have no further reasons not to release Rosa and Chita back into the care of Chanti and Chhork. It is worth pointing out here that neither yourself nor anyone else associated with Citipointe has once visited the community into which the family wishes to be reintegrated. It is also worth pointing out that the cost involved in buying the house is the equivalent of the money spend by Citipointe in one moth keeping Rosa and Chita incarcerated in an institution.

I will write to you again once the appropriate paper work has been done to buy the house and trust that Citipointe will not attempt to find some new reason to refuse the reintegration of Rosa and Chita not just back into their immediate family but back into the two extended families of Chanti and Chhork and the village community of which they are a part.

I will be in Phnom Penh for a few more weeks if you wish to discuss with me and Chanti the practicalities of Rosa and Chita returning to live with Chanti, Chhork ands the rest of the their family. It may be that Citipointe wishes to assist myself and my Christian friend in our ongoing help for the family.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Chanti out of hospital - letter for Leigh Ramsay

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152

10^th Feb 2013

Dear Leigh

In the four days that have elapsed since my 6^th Feb letter neither you nor anyone else associated with Citipointe or the ‘She’ refuge has made any enquiries regarding Chanti’s illness. It seems not to have occurred to you that Chanti’s illness might be serious or that, in her misery and distress, she might wish to see Rosa and Chita or that they might wish to visit their mother in hospital. Has Citpointe even told the girls that their mother is ill and in hospital? Are you and Citipointe completely devoid of compassion, empathy, understanding and basic human decency? I will leave it up to readers of my blog, viewers of my completed documentary and readers of my book to determine.

Further blood tests revealed that Chanti has pneumonia. The pneumonia itself does not present any real danger to her baby (another girl). The danger to the baby, when Chanti was admitted to hospital, was the high fever she had – a fever that could, if uncontrolled, damage the baby’s health. The fever was quickly brought down by the hospital with medication and, after four days and many plastic bags of intravenous fluid, Chanti has been discharged from the hospital and is now at home again with her family.

Chanti was not looking forward to spending the Chinese New Year holiday in hospital. She wished to spend it, as do all Cambodians, with her family. This she will do for the remainder of the holiday, though two members of her family will be conspicuously absent since you refuse, Citipointe church refuses, the ‘She’ refuge refuses to allow Rosa and Chita to celebrate any Buddhist or national holidays with their family. This is unsurprising since, amongst other human rights abuses practiced by Citipointe, alienating Rosa and Chita from the Buddhist religion of their family is the church’s way of guaranteeing (it hopes) that these young girls can be indoctrinated into Citipointe’s warped form of Christianity – lacking in the generosity of spirit and compassion that Christ taught. I wonder what your God make of your total lack of interest in Chanti’s welfare, Leigh? How sick would she Chanti need to be before Citipointe would put its hand into its very full pockets (thanks in part to Citipointe’s practice of ‘poverty tourism’ and dishonest online advertising) and pay for her to see a doctor when she had a high fever?

Chanti is very thankful that I took her to the doctor and paid her hospital bills. “You have saved my life,” she says. This is not strictly speaking true. Her pneumonia was not life threatening, as long as she did not maintain her  high fever for long enough to damage her soon-to-be-born daughter. However, Chanti was very scared that she would die because she could not afford to go to hospital and receive the treatment she knew she needed and which Citipointe, as a matter of principle, will not provide or even make a contribution to. All in all Chanti’s hospitalization and medicines cost me $160. Not a lot of money when you consider the possible ramifications of Chanti not receiving the medical attention she needed.  If Chanti were dying and I were not in a position to help, would Citipointe?   

In a few weeks Chanti’s new baby girl will come into the world. The cost of the baby’s delivery will not be great (less than $100) but does it even occur to Citipointe to make a contribution to the expenses involved in the baby’s delivery? And what ever happened to the counseling in birth control that Citipointe promised Chanti more than four years ago? As with all the promises made to Chanti (and myself) it never happened. You lied to both Chanti and myself back then and it is clear from your actions since that your intention right from the outset was to do whatever it took to steal Chanti’s daughters from her – only 15 months later obtaining validation for your actions from the ‘Trafficking’ section of the Ministry of Social Affairs. How on earth Citipointe has managed to convince the Ministry that Rosa and Chita were ever involved in the sex trade, had been trafficked or were in danger of being trafficked, is a mystery to me. You know that they were not and that any implication they are victims of the sex trade in any of its many manifestations is yet another lie perpetrated by yourself and Citipointe.

Quite apart from the distress Citipointe’s dishonest representation of itself as having, in some sense, ‘rescued’ Rosa and Chita, has had on Chanti, Citipointe’s actions in this regard are an insult to those organizations that are genuinely involved in rescuing victims of the sex trade; that are genuinely involved in working towards the re-integration of these girls and young woman back into their families and communities.

On July 28^th last year, after a meeting with you in Phnom Penh, I wrote: “It was good to meet today and talk about the re-integration of Rosa and Srey Mal back into Chanti’s family. Whilst there are some things we disagree on, there is more than enough that we agree on to put a plan into action to facilitate this re-integration along the lines I have mentioned already in my letter of 24^th July or in some alternative manner that Citipointe might like to suggest.”

You indicated in this meeting that of course you wanted Rosa and Srey Mal to be reintegrated back into their family. What have you done since to make this promise a reality? Nothing. Quite the reverse. You continue to severely restrict Chanti’s access to her daughters (a few hours a month) and they to their mother with no regard for the feelings of either mother or daughters.  You have never, this past four years, come up with any kind of re-integration plan, as promised. You are a liar and a fraud, Leigh Ramsay and a day will come when you will no longer be able to ignore me, ignore the express wishes of Rosa and Chita’s mother, ignore the laws of both Cambodia and Australia. The day will come when you are publicly exposed as a fraud. If you wish to sue me for defamation  for  referring to you as a liar and a fraud in public please do so. In a court of law it would be easy to prove you to be a fraud. You would not be in the position you have maintained with me of refusing to answer any questions at all – even in my capacity as Chanti’s advocate. The luxury of refusing to answer questions would not be afforded to you in court.

As will be apparent to you by now, I have no intention of resting until Rosa and Chita are re-united with their family. You will, of course, put up a fight since you have decided that these girls are now church property and that their mother is just a nuisance. This blog, a complete record of how it is that Citipointe got to steal and retain custody of Rosa and Chita will, in the fullness of time, leave interested onlookers with few doubts as to what has taken place over the past four years. And it is to be hoped that at some point the person or organization asking you and Citipointe to answer question in relation to how you came to acquire custody of Rosa and Chita, how you have retained custody, will also be in a position to instruct you, with appropriate directness to release Chanti’s daughters back into her care immediately.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Citipointe turns a blind eye to Chanti's illness- yet again!

Leigh Ramsay

322 Wecker Road

Carindale

QLD 4152

6^th Feb 2013

Dear Leigh

I have arrived in Phnom Penh to find Chanti sick and in need of hospitalization.  As you know, Chanti is 8 months pregnant. Her white blood cells are, I discovered in my first 24 hours in Phnom Penh, dangerously low as a result of a respiratory infection. The precise nature of the infection will not be known until a second round of blood tests have been done. What we do know at present is that there is a build up of fluid in her body that, if it is not dealt with, could place Chanti’s baby's life at risk. The cost of the hospital will be $45 a day – a cost that I will, yet again, quite happily meet.

The prime issue here is not so much that Citipointe is mean-spirited in offering no help at all to any other members of Chanti’s family (though this is the case) but that it never occurs to you or your staff to even make enquiries as to the health of Chanti’s family. It would have been blindingly obvious to the Citipopinte staff who visited Chanti’s home just a few days ago that she had a fever, was not well and needed to see a doctor she could ill afford.  Did they pas this information on to you? A couple of years ago it was a tumour on Chanti’s wrist that was large enough that your staff could not have failed to notice it. It cost only $60 to have the tumour removed – a cost that Citipointe would not meet. I did. Have your staff been instructed NOT to make enquiries about the health of Chanti and her family? Are there any circumstances under which your church might reach out and help Chyanti and her family? The potential death of her unborn child, for instance! What sort of a Christian are you, Leigh?

Your total disregard for the well-being of Chanti herself, and for the rest of her family, no longer astounds me. What does astound me is that your fellow Christian NGOs, under the umbrella of Chab Dai, turn a blind eye to your exploitation of the girls in your care – in contravention of both Cambodian and Australian law and the basic precepts of Christianity. It astounds me also that the government of Cambodia allows an NGO such as Citipointe to operate in this country – an NGO that engages in (at least) two varieties of human rights abuse – of the children themselves and of their parents.

Poverty tourism, also known as orphan-tourism is the latest in a long line of human rights abuses visited upon the poor Cambodian people. This involves subjecting young girls like Rosa and Chita to the gaze (and camera lenses) of  ‘well-meaning’ tourists who believe they can demonstrate to others and themselves what ‘good’ and ‘caring’ people they are visiting an orphanage, working in the kitchen and otherwise hanging out with the children of poor parents. The bulk of these children are not orphans at all, of course. They have families.  Poor families. This is a scam and should end – both in the case of genuine orphans and those who, like Rosa and Chita, have effectively been ‘stolen’ from their poor parents.

In the case of Citipointe there is another level to this ‘poverty-tourism’ scam – namely presenting girls like Rosa and Chita as having been rescued from the sex trade. This is a bald-faced lie. Do you ever tell your Citipointe ‘poverty tourists’ that Rosa and Srey Mal have a mother and a father, a grandmother, siblings, a home and a dad who earns enough money at a tuk tuk driver to support the whole family? Do you tell your ‘poverty-tourists’  that you have refused Chanti’s repeated requersts to have her daughters returned to her care?  Do you tell your ‘poverty tourists’ of the enormous distress it causes Chanti being able to see her daughters for only a few hours each month? Do you tell your ‘poverty tourists’ that the ‘She’ refuge is much less concerned with the welfare of the families the church claims to be reintegrating the children in its care back into than in exploiting girls like Rosa and Chita to raise money for the church?

Turning children into tourist attractions would not be tolerated in Australia, as you know. Nor would the stealing of the daughters of poor parents by tricking them into signing worthless contracts that they could not read and did not understand. In Australia you would be up on charges of kidnapping for what you have done – holding Rosa and Chita for 15 months against the express wishes of their mother and father.

There is another new development in this ongoing saga but I will leave off telling you of it until Chanti has been returned to health – with no thanks at all to yourself or Citipointe church. You are the kind of Christian, Leigh, that gives Christianity a bad name.

best wishes

James Ricketson

for Leigh Ramsay - yet another letter to ignore!

Leigh Ramsay

Citipointe church

322 Wecker Rd

Carindale QLD 4152                                                                      3rd Dec 2012

Dear Leigh

Yet another letter for you to ignore, not respond to, pretend has not been written! 

Transparency and accountability are not top priorities for you or Citipointe church are they? The fact that Chanti has given me written permission to act as an advocate on her behalf (a copy of which I handed to you in person) means nothing to you or Citipointe. You have no regard at all for the emotional torment you put Chanti through as each month, each year, passes and she sees her daughters (despite your repeated promises to return them) not growing up with their family but in an institution in which they are indoctrinated into Citipointe church’s version of the Christian faith.

It would seem that you have every intention of doing so until the girls are eighteen years old - as Rebecca Brewer implied would be the case in her emails to me four years ago. All the promises you have made to Chanti since then (well documented in my blog) have been empty; raising in Chanti’s mind and heart the false hope that if she could just meet whatever Citipointe church’s latest criteria are, that she will have her daughters returned to her. Each and every time her hopes have been dashed when Citipointe has shifted the goal posts - the most recent example being earlier this month when the family acquired a tuk tuk with my assistance. It matters not at all to your or your church that Chanti and her family now have an income greater than 80% of Cambodians. Despite the fact that Rosa and Chita do not, in Dec 2013, require assistance from Citipointe, you still retain custody of the girls with no regard for their mother’s wishes.  As far as you are concerned, Citipointe church now ‘owns’ Rosa and Srey Mal and Chanti, by virtue of her being poor and illiterate, has no rights at all to to be a mother to her own daughters. Rosa and Chita should be living with their now and not detained in an institution run by a church that raises money presenting the girls as having been rescued from the sex trade! If you behaved in this way in Australia you would have the police at your front door quick smart! 

It is a very strange interpretation of Jesus Christ’s teachings indeed that makes it possible for you and the church to make Chanti suffer the angst of separation from her daughters. You have had it in your power, this past four years, to help the entire family and not just two members of it. 

I have often, in my correspondence with Citipointe, used the expression ‘stolen’ in relation to Citipointe’s retaining custody of Rosa and Chita against their mother’s wishes for the 15 months prior to the church entering into a secret agreement with the Ministry of Social Affairs. During this time Chanti repeatedly requested that her daughters be returned to her care. During this fifteen months Citipointe refused Chanti’s every request - despite having no legal basis (in Cambodian, Australian or International law) to hold them contrary to her mother’s clearly expressed wishes. 

The word ‘stolen’ is too mild, however, for what Citipointe has done. ‘Kidnapping’ comes closer to describing Citipointe’s actions during those 15 months. You will not sue me for for defamation for making this observation in a public forum because you know full well that I can prove the illegality of your actions in a court of law - the ‘contract’ that you got Chanti to apply her thumb print (a contract she could not read, did not understand and was not explained to her.  It contains none of the terms .and conditions you told Chanti it contained and which, until it was translated, she believed it to contain. The contract was worthless - even in a Cambodian court of law.

The removal of Chanti’s children from her care is, in my view much worse than what took place during the ‘Stolen Generation’ years of Australian history. Back then the Australian community at large adhered to a different set of values and believed, sincerely, that Aboriginal children would be better off growing up in institutions than with their materially poor parents. And there was a community wide belief that Christianity was a superior religion to that practiced by Aboriginal people.  Over the past half century, however, we have seen first hand in Australia the enormous emotional and psychological damage done to both the Aboriginal parents who had their children stolen and to the children themselves as they grew into adulthood traumatized by their experience of being forcibly removed from their families. The guilt we felt, as a nation, for having visited this pain on Aboriginal families resulted in our Prime Minister’s formal apology to the ‘Stolen Generation’ a few years ago. Now, thanks to NGO’s such as Citipointe’s ‘She’ refuge, we have exported this failed social policy to a third world country and, in the process, enabled Citipointe to make money out of presenting young girls like Rosa and Chita as victims of sex trafficking when in truth they are nothing more than the victims of poverty whose mother agreed to allow Citipointe to assist her in the short term. This abuse of the entire family’s human rights is countenanced by Chab Dai - the Christian coalition of NGOs of which Citipointe church is a member - and, it seems,. by the NGO community in Cambodian generally. 

Today the explanations and excuses of bygone decades cannot and do not apply in Australia and the laws regarding the removal of children from their families are strict and not decided by the whim of Christians seeking to win souls for Jesus Christ. The forced conversion of Chanti’s Buddhist daughters to Christianity is yet another human rights abuse perpetrated by Citipointe church - perhaps even more reprehensible than the fact that the ‘SHe’ refuge acts as a cash cow for the chruch.

That Citipointe church should be replicating the dynamic of the Stolen Generation is not only stupid, uncaring and in contravention of Christian values as I understand them but also shows a lack of sensitivity to the idea that poor mothers  in the third world love their children as much as mothers in the first world who never need to worry about how to feed their kids; that the children of poor parents love their mums, dads, brothers and sisters in the same way that we privileged members of the developed world do. To break or damage the bonds of love between children and their parents as Citipointe is in the case of Chanti’s family constitutes emotional abuse that is, in my view, amongst the worst of crimes to be committed against a child - not far behind sexual abuse.

I have ample footage in which it is abundantly clear that Chanti loves Rosa and Chita and that they love her. Yes, there have been times when Chanti has been unable to feed and clothe them adequately (though not now) but, rather than help Chanti take care of her kids (as you promised her and myself four years ago you would do) you have taken her daughters away from her and left her and the rest of the family to fend for themselves. In so doing you disgrace other Christians (NGOs included) who see their role less as winning souls for Jesus Christ (and making money in the process, in the case of Citipointe) but living out the sharing and caring aspects of Christ’s Gospel.

I have asked this question many times and many times you have declined to answer it. I am asking as Chanti’s advocate. Could you please provide both Chanti and myself with a copy of whatever contract Citipointe church has entered into with the The Ministry of Social Affairs regarding the custody of her daughters Rosa and Chita (Srey Mal)? That you should enter into a secret agreement with the Ministry of Social Affairs with no reference to Chanti at all speaks volumes of Citipointe’s contempt for Chanti’s rights as a mother.

best wishes

James Ricketson