A Change of Guard

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Saturday 29 September 2012

Church group comes to aid of Cambodian children

Ratanak founder talks about international child sex trade


Brian McConaghy’s life was changed by a little girl he never met.

After being shelled and shot at on the Thai-Cambodian border, McConaghy ended up in a Cambodian refugee camp. He heard stories of a little girl named Ratanak, who died because the communist regime wouldn’t allow medicine in the camp to treat the injuries she received while working in the country’s child sex trade.
But it wasn’t that experience that led the forensic scientist with the RCMP to start Ratanak, the international charity that now rescues children who have been sold to pimps and brothels. It was the horror of watching seven young girls getting raped on video that forced him into action.
McConaghy had been working on the Willy Pickton prostitute murder file when he was asked by the Vancouver City Police department to watch a series of videos.
“I could walk away from the statistics of human trafficking,” he said. “But I couldn’t walk away from that. It changed me forever.”
McConaghy found five of the seven girls he saw in the videos and brought them into the Ratanak fold. He couldn’t identify one child and one is still in the sex trade, but he said he will find her.
McConaghy talked about the charity during a fundraiser held at the Centurion Conference Centre in Nepean on Sept. 27.
The second annual Ladies Night Out was organized by the women’s group at St. Leonard’s Parish in Manotick.
Organizer Sandy Russell said they had 240 women turn out this year.
“I think this cause resonates with women in Manotick because it’s a family community and we feel for the children,” she said.
Russell, whose husband serves in the RCMP like McConaghy, said she has been to Cambodia and saw the organization at work.
“I was blown away,” she said.
McConaghy said there is hope to get the country turned around, but the political climate had a lot to do with fostering what he calls a haven for international pedophiles.
In April 1975, a communist revolution decimated the country’s population. McConaghy said more than 3 million of the country’s 7.5-million population were killed during the uprising.
“Basically anyone with more than a Grade 3 education was killed,” he said. “There’s a reason that they call it the Killing Fields.”
The killings caused families to be torn apart, producing a generation that didn’t know how to be parents.
“There was a lot of domestic violence with children subsisting by eating garbage off the streets,” McConaghy said.
Many of the children sold into the sex trade are sent there by their families. They are started in the brothels as young as five. Because it is believed that having sex with a virgin has rejuvenating powers, their first clients pay an exorbitant sum to keep them in a hotel and have sex with them for a week.
Then they are used goods and their value drops dramatically. In some cases the girls only earn $2 per customer.
“There was no police, no judicial system and no family unit, so it’s a perfect storm for the child sex trade,” McConaghy said.
The New Song Centre, named for two girls who were rescued, basically abducts young girls from the brothels in order to save them from sex work.
While McConaghy showed slides of the centre, he reminded the audience that he couldn’t show the front of the building as the address is secret to protect the girls.
“The girls are product. We essentially have to steal them from the brothels. It’s no different than stealing cocaine from a dealer,” McConaghy said.
Ratanak staff start working with girls before they rescue them.
McConaghy said it’s tough to spend the day playing with little girls only to go back to your hotel knowing they are being assaulted.
“They are just like other kids except they can’t sit down because of the abuse the night before,” he said. “Then you finish playing and they get painted up and ready for work.”
Once rescued, girls are accepted into a Ratanak group home and led in a ceremonial dance by other rescued girls.
For some it is the first time they get a bed of their own, not shared with other girls and middle-aged men.
“Most of the time the girls are afraid of us. They think if we were able to steal them we are more powerful then the men who… raped them. They need the other girls to tell them they are finally safe.”
Once there, the healing begins.
There are currently 54 girls at the New Song Centre and 61 workers are on hand to deal with their complex emotional, physical and mental needs.
“These girls are just ruined,” McConaghy said. “We are not talking about one or two sexual assaults, we are talking about thousands.”
Girls are taught they are valued and given skills so they can work and make money without selling their bodies. They actually bake cakes – what McConaghy said were the best in Asia – for the country’s upper crust.
“These are kids that were told they are lower than dirt making cakes for the royal family and diplomats,” he said. “It really helps with their self worth.”
And the country is slowing recovering. The University of Phnom Penh finally has a social work program and the government is co-operating with Ratanak’s efforts.
“The ministry of social services is now putting us through the ringer making sure our programs are properly structured and I couldn’t be more pleased,” McConaghy said.
Here in Canada Manitoba MP Joy Smith has been working on changing Canadian law to deal with human trafficking.
Her son worked with the integrated child exploitation unit led by the RCMP, which gave her insight into a world she didn’t know existed.
“Often the pimps will brand their victims,” she said. “And these kids are just ruined. But they can be brought back.”
The Conservative MP was the driving force behind Bill C-310 – which gives the Canadian government the authority to go after Canadian citizens or permanent residents who commit human trafficking offences abroad.
“It sends a clear message we won’t tolerate it,” she said.
Both Smith and McConaghy said the hope comes from the children themselves.
“A lot of people think that the children can’t come back from some of the things they have had to endure, but with enough love they and understanding they can,” Smith said.
McConaghy ended his talk with the story of a group of young girls who testified against a former U.S. Marine Captain who had moved to Cambodia and bought seven young girls. He was arrested and brought up on molestation charges in the States, but the girls – who had been rescued by Ratanak – had to travel there to testify.
“They had to fly and when they got off the plan they were surrounded by white males. They were terrified. But they all got up on the stand and testified for a grueling five hours,” McConaghy said. “After that we took them on a VIP tour of Disneyland.”
The captain was given a prison sentence of 110 years.
“I can live with that,” McConaghy said.
He showed a slide of the seven young girls who testified in princess dresses. Their faces were blocked out to protect their identity. He showed another one of the girls grown up. The girls had smiles on their faces and were on their way to building a better life.
He continues to search for the last girl he saw being raped in the series of videos from the Vancouver police.
“There’s still work to do,” he said.
jennifer.mcintosh@metroland.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They come to convert budhist children