Vancouver-based
Ratanak International and others work to rebuild a community.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
VIDEO >> http://goo.gl/h1WMR
Svay Pak is a hellhole, a dirty, stinking slum of about 4,000 people.
It’s also notorious for being one of few places where men can pay for sex with
children as young as three.
When Pastor Chantha Hem, his wife, Bunthan, and their baby son came
here three years ago from Phnom Penh, they moved into a former brothel. Their
pink room, upstairs, had been reserved for the raping of virgins.
Downstairs, there were bare-walled cells with wooden slatted beds and
sleeping mats that had been rented out by the hour, mostly to foreign men who
wanted to have sex with children.
“I am not just a pastor,” Hem says. “We try to stop child trafficking.
Sometimes we confront traffickers and gangsters. This is my challenge ...
“The foreigners come night and day. Sometimes I pretend like a pimp and
we have communications with them and we try to record it and we try to get
information to give to the police. It is very dangerous. But we have to try to stop
this.”
The pastor says 90 per cent of an estimated 2,000 children in this
village have been sold to a pimp or a brothel owner and been sexually abused.
“Most are abandoned by their parents and live with their grandparents
or a neighbour or some other relative. The moms are gone ... It’s very
difficult to forgive the parents.”
Among his 250 parishioners, Hem says 12 or 13 are former brothel owners
— both men and women. Among their business partners, he says, were government
officials and even army officers.
“They told me that when you sell children who are five, six, seven or
eight years old, you feel shame. Your heart feels guilty ... But now they come
to church. Some are doing good [things] and some are still doing bad things.”
The village, however, has changed.
Because of Hem’s work and other programs funded by Vancouver-based
Ratanak International and California-based Agape International Missions,
children now have a safe place to go during the day. When AIM took applications
for the school it runs, 2,000 children applied along with six villagers in
their 80s who had never had the chance before.
The general health of the community has been improved because of AIM’s
twice-weekly medical clinic and an annual dental clinic, staffed by American
volunteers who fly in and work for a week.
But it hasn’t ended the sexual exploitation. It’s driven it
underground, making it harder to detect.
“During the day, you see many girls here. At night, you hardly see any.
The brothels, they keep them secretly and move them around from one place to
another. Some of them go mostly by [motorcycle] to Phnom Penh at night. But
from here they are also sent to Siem Reap and Sihanoukville,” says Hem.
Dangerous
As rewarding as the work is, it may get the pastor killed.
“Many times people have tried to kill me. Right now, every night, they
stone my door. They are drunk and have been taking drugs. ‘Come out, we want to
kill you,’ they say. I trust Jesus. God has called us to come here and I
believe God will protect us.
“Sometimes I feel afraid. When I pray to God I ask him to protect us.”
Ever since he arrived, Hem’s had death threats.
People accuse him of coming here to ruin their business — the business
of selling in children.
According to the 2011 U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons
report — which specifically mentions the child sex trafficking ring in Svay Pak
— that business is being run by people “believed to be well-connected and
protected from effective government investigation and prosecution.”
The threats against Hem intensified after he rescued two five-year-old
girls — one in 2010 and the other late last year — by notifying police that
both were about to be sold into sex slavery.
The most recently rescued girl is now in a safe house. Her mother is in
jail.
Hem finds it hard to accept his neighbours who sell their own children.
But the foreigners who come here to buy them trouble him more.
“They are so rich and they use their money in the wrong way. Why don’t
they use their money to help the people? Why don’t they use their money for
good? This is the wicked thing in Cambodia.”
Daily kids camp
One of the first things the pastor did when he moved here in 2006 was
set up a daily kids camp, a safe place for children to come, play games, sing
songs and forget even for a few hours the misery of their lives.
At first, only 16 kids showed up.
“People would not allow their kids to come. So, I would knock on their
doors day by day and more and more would come together. At first it was very
hard work. We didn’t know anybody and they don’t know Jesus, they had their own
culture and religion. They were used to gambling, alcohol and abusing girls.
“At first, I tried to build a relationship between them and us. I would
go and hang around every day. We would try to help them. Even if he’s a bad
guy, I kept telling myself that God still loves him.”
Soon, the number of kids had doubled. Now, there are days when as many
as 500 children attend kids club or the twice-weekly medical clinic — or simply
show up to watch cartoons and have some lunch or a snack. Attendance at Sunday
church services also increased, to the point that the congregation outgrew the
former brothel that had been renamed Rahab’s House.
In 2010, AIM — with funds from Ratanak International — rented a bigger
building on the main street. It was to have been a brothel and hotel. It’s now called
The Sanctuary.
Moved in eight
years ago
Californians Don and Bridget Brewster, who founded Agape International
Missions eight years ago, moved into The Sanctuary a year ago. They moved to
the top-floor apartment from Phnom Penh, where they’d been living at the
organization’s trauma recovery house for rescued girls.
Since opening that safe house in 2006, nearly 200 girls have benefited
from the intensive counselling, education and training offered there.
Among them are at least one of the victims of Canada’s first convicted
sex tourist, Donald Bakker, and seven girls whose testimony in a California
court resulted in ex-Marine and sex tourist Michael Pepe being sentenced to
more than 100 years in prison.
Although their home is called The Sanctuary, Bridget admits that it’s
frightening to receive nightly death threats and that she frequently cries in
the shower where no one can see or hear her.
“It’s the Wild West here ... The other night there was a machete fight
outside with boys and girls all drugged up fighting. It’s a little crazy.”
While we talked, the noise at times was almost deafening as about 175
children laughed, screamed and sang their way through kids club.
“I think the worst that I’ve seen is some bloody clothes from a little
girl who had been raped during the day,” says Bridget. “A man took her out
behind The Sanctuary, behind that big bougainvillea tree, and raped her. Then,
she came here.”
But there are successes that make the work worthwhile. One of the
rescued girls has now returned to Svay Pak, where she runs her own sewing
business and will soon be married.
Still, Bridget says the best thing is seeing kids being kids.
“I never knew how cruel a person could be to totally devalue then
totally rob a child of innocence. But to see these girls laugh and be kids
again is a look into the future.”
Still, that future is far from guaranteed.
On a second trip to Svay Pak, we walked out of Rahab’s House — where a
group of American dentists (many former Vietnam veterans) were working in conditions
that looked like a scene from the old television show M*A*S*H — to see four
young Americans hunting for children.
Noticing us, the Americans urged the driver of their tuk-tuk — a
motorcycle-powered cart — to turn around.
Several people snapped photos of them. A couple of missionary
volunteers jumped on motorbikes to follow them.
Will they be charged? Not likely.
It’s not a crime to go to Svay Pak, even though Svay Pak is nothing
like Bangkok’s notorious Patpong where tourists now go to shop and take a look
at what was once the heart of Southeast Asia’s child sex trade.
There are no signs on the paved road pointing to the small, bumpy trail
that passes for Svay Pak’s main street. Even most tuk-tuk, moto and taxi
drivers — the decent ones — don’t know how to get here.
It’s not surprising. There are only two reasons come.
One is to have sex with children; the other is to rescue them.
DAPHNE BRAMHAM
The Vancouver Sun
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