National
‘She was
playing at
her cousin’s
house when
he took her
upstairs
and tried to
rape her’
A three-year-old girl tells an officer from
the newly formed Child Protection Unit
how she was assaulted. This is just
one harrowing case in the battle
against child abuse in Cambodia
Will Jackson
Post Weekend
itting at a metal table in
Siem Reap’s drab
single-room Serious
Crime Police office this
week, the three-year-old spoke in
quiet monosyllables.
Next to her, child support officer
Som Vathna, from the Phnom Penhbased Child Protection Unit (CPU),
was gently asking her questions,
while sitting opposite, the unit’s
legal assistant Sok Sopheak Monica
took notes. The girl’s father was also
there, watching.
Her wispy brown hair tied up in a
bun and her tiny hands in her lap,
the girl confirmed what her parents
had already reported. They told the
police that the day before she had
been sexually assaulted by her
17-year-old cousin at their village
about 17km outside Siem Reap.
“She was playing at her cousin’s
house when he took her upstairs and
tried to rape her,” Monica said after
the interview. “When it was over,
she ran home and told her mother.”
A partnership between the Cambodian Children’s Fund and the
Cambodian National Police, the CPU
was established to assist national
and provincial officers in cases of
serious assault, rape or homicide of
minors in the hope that more child
abuse offenders in the country could
be brought to justice.
With the backing of the highprofile and well funded charity, the
CPU has the cash, experience and
resources that Cambodia’s chronically under-funded police lack.
Assistance ranges from little
things such as providing phone
cards and petrol money to training
in advanced investigative skills and
coordinating major operations.
A team from the CPU was in Siem
Reap this week as part of a multiagency task force brought together
to arrest Long Ven, 33, who goes
by the name “Waha”, the director
of an unregistered English language school suspected of renting
out pupils for sex in exchange for
donations.
Ven was apprehended by plainclothes police at the Siem Reap FCC
on Monday. Shortly afterwards, dozens of students under the age of 13
were interviewed by child support
officers at the Underprivileged
Children School in Sambat
Village, while nine older students
were found at an apartment rented
by Ven in Siem Reap. He has since
been charged with procuring children for the purposes of prostitution.
The CPU’s operations manager,
P.4 / saturday, JULY 12, 2014
1
S
James McCabe, said it was unusual
for his team to be investigating sex
trafficking. “We’re involved because
it’s a major operation that crosses
provincial and international
boundaries and requires additional
resources,” said McCabe, who previously worked for Australia’s National Crime Authority. “But, while
it’s horrible to say, child rape cases
really are our core business.”
McCabe, 45, who started up the
CPU, revealed that the three-yearold’s case was the unit’s 104th child
rape investigation this year. Total
cases number 118. The unit takes
a “holistic approach to child rape,
assault and homicide” from initial
investigations through to victim
support and prosecutions.
“Our main priority is to minimise
trauma to children and the best way
to do that is to get good physical
evidence so the courts don’t have
to rely on child testimony,” said
McCabe. “We don’t want them having to go over their experience over
and over again.”
Along with demonstrating advanced policing techniques on the
job, the CPU, which employs 34 staff
including three Westerners, also
runs training courses. “So we focus
on training, capacity building and
teaching
investigative techniques,” he said.
So far it seems to be working. The
CPU has an arrest rate of about 80
per cent and all 17 of the suspects
who have gone to court have been
found guilty. “The sentences have
ranged from two to 20 years,” added
McCabe.
At the headquarters of the Cambodian Children’s Fund in Phnom
Penh, executive director Scott Neeson said the CPU was something of
a departure from the charity’s usual
projects, which have previously
focused on education, accommodation and health care for youngsters.
“It terms of vision, it had always
made me very angry that there were
so many cases of child rape you
came across anecdotally, with so
many families and children, and no
one ever got charged. Money would
change hands,” added Neeson, a
former Hollywood film executive
turned children’s rights advocate
who founded the Cambodian
Children’s Fund in 2004.
“I had a very stereotypical,
judgemental view that it was about
making money [for the police].
“It was when Jim [McCabe]
CHILD ABUse / cash settlements
Rapists negotiate pay-offs to avoid going to court
Will Jackson
Post Weekend
Only a minority of rapes in
Cambodia go to court with perpetrators often avoiding prosecution by
paying off their victims’ families.
Amnesty International’s 2010
report “Breaking the Silence – Sexual
Violence in Cambodia” found that
due to social stigma only a small
proportion of rapes were reported to
police. Often those that were ended in
illegal financial settlements between
the victims’ families and the rapists.
Chhan Sokunthea, head of
ADHOC’s women’s and children’s
rights section, admitted it was
common for perpetrators and victims’
families to negotiate cash settlements
to avoid a court case. “The victims’
families, most of them are poor, they
need the money and they don’t know
about the law,” said Sokunthea.
In some cases, the police would
take money from the perpetrators to
convince the victim’s family to
accept a cash payment, she added.
Another disincentive to pressing
charges was lack of faith in the
judicial system. Most families
believed the court system was corrupt
and they wouldn’t get a fair hear-
ing. “The family would rather get
compensation from the perpetrator’s
family,” said Sokunthea.
The problem largely stems from the
fact that police officers in Cambodia
are poorly paid and are open to what
is called “tea money”.
“The salary of the police, of the
local authorities, is low and if they
[are not] corrupt how can they survive and live?” said Sokunthea.
Mok Chito, chief of the Interior
Ministry’s Central Justice Department, said police officers were not
allowed to offer a compromise
settlement between a victim’s family
and an accused perpetrator.
“Police had been trying to inform
villagers and NGOs to let parents
know about the law and to make sure
their children were not left unattended,” added Chito.
saturday,
JULY 12, 2014
2
5
KEEPING our
children safe
1: A young boy looks out of the window at the Underprivileged Children School in Sambat Village
2: Police arrest Long Ven (striped shirt), the director of the Underprivileged Children School
3: A child abuse victim
4: James McCabe (left) working with officers from the Child Protection Unit
5: Pupils were allegedly rented out for sex at the Underprivileged Children School
photograpHs BY GEORGE NICKELLS AND CHILD PROTECTION UNIT
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presented the model [for the CPU] of
what the issue really is [that I got on
board] and it’s [that the police are]
under-resourced and under-trained.
As well the opportunity to not only
bring about a higher arrest rate but
also show a deterrent which has
never been [there] before.”
The programme should also see
a long-term improvement in arrest
rates. The CPU was like “capacity
building on steroids”, said Neeson.
Eric Meldrum, a former British
police force detective turned antiexploitation consultant, is supportive
of the work the CPU is doing as the
Cambodian police are so underresourced that even basic assistance
will make a huge difference. “They’re
doing work that really needs to be
done,” said Meldrum. “They’re not
doing really complex cases, so a little bit of money goes a long way.”
But not everyone is convinced
that the police should be receiving outside assistance. Ear Sophal,
the author of Aid Dependence in
Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance
Undermines Democracy, said ideally recurring costs such as petrol
and food should be covered by the
government. “Generally, I would say
that it is not appropriate to dedicate
resources for such expenses if one is
interested in sustainability,” Sophal
wrote in an email. “But if one is
interested in expediency, then anything goes. You might as well pay
the police to do its work if it leads to
the results you want.
“Such partnerships are not unheard of, see for example [disgraced
anti-trafficking crusader Somaly
Mam’s NGO] AFESIP and its close
association with the police. [But this
is] problematic at times, to say the
least.”
For many, it was attractive to
think the ends justified the means.
“But that is a slippery slope: What
if only bribes resulted in crimes
against children being solved?” said
Sophal. “Would that be justifiable?
The most important thing is putting
an end to impunity, and that will
result in crimes being solved fairly
quickly.”
But Sophal’s criticism was rejected
by Neeson. “If it comes down to
providing a couple of phone cards
and some money for petrol, we’ll do
it,” he said. “I feel like it encourages
rather than replaces government
investment.”
Meanwhile, the programme has
support from the highest levels
in the police administration. Mok
Chito, chief of the Interior Ministry’s
Central Justice Department, said the
CPU and the police were cooperating
well. However, he talked down the
impact of the CPU on arrest rates.
“We were still on duty before
the CPU existed. Even though our
investigating is still limited, we are
able to work it out,” he said. “Even
though [the police] could miss some
sources, we were still able to solve
about 70 per cent of cases.”
When there was previously a child
murder case, police from the
Ministry of Interior went down to
work with provincial officers, which
was expensive. “Sometimes we don’t
have enough money [but] we still go
down to work it out,” said Chito.
So far, one of the CPU’s biggest
achievements has been the development of the Battambang police force.
“We don’t need to go out with them
on jobs any more, the standard of
their investigations is so good now,”
said McCabe.
If the success of Battambang can
be replicated in other provinces, the
CPU may be able to shut in six or
seven years. “That’s how I measure
our success,” said McCabe. “When
we’re not needed any more.”
5
CHILD ABUse / TRAINING IN Forensics
‘Blue glow’ helped trap child rape victim’s attacker
Will Jackson
Post Weekend
In a small provincial village, a fouryear-old girl was snatched from her
home during the night, taken to a
nearby rice field and brutally raped.
Her mother found her in the morning with one eye swollen shut and a
ragged wound on her throat where
her attacker had tried to crush her
windpipe. A family friend, who was
known as an “uncle”, was suspected
but wouldn’t confess.
The police called in the Child
Protection Unit (CPU) and one of
the detectives sprayed the suspect’s
hands with luminol, a chemical used
to detect traces of blood.
From under the man’s fingernails
a tell-tale blue glow emerged. That
forensic evidence would make all the
difference, said James McCabe, the
head of the CPU. “[The suspect] was
charged and he will end up being
convicted. What was a weak case is
now very strong.”
McCabe said Cambodian police
already used basic forensic techniques – such as taking fingerprints
and footprints and crime scene
photography – but the CPU was helping them take their craft to the next
level. The use of luminol was just one
of the new techniques the CPU has
introduced. Others included the creation of detailed crime scene diagrams
and DNA collection.
This has helped the standard of
investigation procedures improve
in Cambodia’s countryside. “We’re
seeing an enormous improvement,”
said McCabe. “And it’s the CNP who
are doing it. They have a real want to
use new techniques and to work.”
Many provincial police officers
had received training in advanced
investigative techniques but due to a
lack of resources had rarely been able
to put them into practice before.
“Thanks to the CPU, we can solve
cases much more quickly and more
easily than before,” said Tith Bunna,
a senior CNP officer and head of
crime scene investigation.