The Hon Julie Bishop
Minister for Foreign
Affairs
House of Representatives,
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
14th March 2014
Dear Minister
On 12th March,
on the same day that I wrote to you, on the same day that I wrote the enclosed
letter to Citipointe church and the Global Development Group, I was supposed to
appear in court in Phnom Penh on charges that I had defamed Citipointe. I
learnt this only when it was pointed out to me in a newspaper article the
following day.
I was served with no
summons by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, there was no warrant and I have been
appraised of none of the evidence in support of the charges brought by
Citipointe. This is the way the judiciary operates in Cambodia, as I am sure
you are very well aware. The defamation
charge is nonsense. It is yet another attempt on the part of Citipointe church
to intimidate me.
It is my intention in
this letter, to defame Citipointe as effectively as I can in hopes that the
church will sue me in Australia and be obliged, by the court to produce the MOU
it entered into with the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It seems that
only in this way, in an Australian court of law, will it be possible for Yem
Chanthy (Chanti) and Both Chhork to be provided with copies of the memorandum
of understanding (MOU) that the church claims gave it the right to remove their
daughters, Rosa and Chita, from the family in 2008.
It
should not be necessary for me to be courting a defamation suit in order to
force Citipointe and the Global Development Group to provide the parents with a
copy of this MOU. It should be possible for someone with the authority to do so
within DFAT, within AusAID to get on the phone and tell Citipointe church and
the board of the Global Development Group that Chanti and Chhork have a legal
and moral right to copies of the MOU and to provide them today. Both Citipointe
and the GDG are able to take advantage of a tax-deductible status conferred on
them by AusAID. It should be possible for AusAID to ask this question; to hold
both NGOs accountable. Indeed, it should be of great concern to AusAID that
Citipointe church, with the tacit approval of the Global Development Group
board, has illegally removed two children from their family in Cambodia. If
this is so, they have broken Cambodian law and breached the Code of Conduct of
the Australian Council for International Development. If it is not so, they
should be able to produce the MOU immediately; an MOU that Chanti, Chhork and
myself, as their legally appointed advocate, have been asking for copies of for
five years now.
Here
are my ‘defamatory’ allegations.
(1)
In July 2008 Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Helen Shields and Rebecca Brewer lied to
Chanti and to myself about the help Citipointe church was offering to provide
to the family during a financial crisis.
(2)
On 31st July 2008 Citipointe staff, pretending to be representatives
of LICADHO, a Cambodian human rights organization, lied about the contents of
the document they tricked Chanti and her mother into signing with their thumb
point.
(3)
On 11th August 2008 Rebecca Brewer lied when, in an email to myself
and in conversations with Chanti, she claimed that the 31st July
2008 ‘contract’ gave Citipointe church the legal right to detain Rosa and Chita
until they were 18.
(4)
During July and August 2008 Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Helen Shields and Rebecca
Brewer employed lies and deceit to illegally take custody of the children of
two materially poor Cambodians. Or, to use language that might make a
defamation lawyer’s job a little easier, Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Rebecca Brewer
and Helen Shields knowingly, deliberately and in a conspiracy with each other,
kidnapped Rosa and Chita from their parents.
(5)
Over the years Pastor Leigh Ramsey has, on many occasions, promised Chanti and
Chhork the imminent return of their daughters. This has never transpired.
Pastor Leigh Ramsey is a liar.
(6)
In my meetings with Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Rebecca Brewer and Helen Shields in
July 2008, they assured that re-integration of Rosa and Chita back into the
family was not only a top priority but that the church would be helping the
entire family to become self-sufficient. This was a lie. In five and a half
years Citipointe has not provided $1 of assistance to the family. Indeed, on a
couple of occasions when Chanti has been ill, Citipointe has offered no
assistance at all. The most extreme example of this lack of compassion is to be
found in Feb 2013 when Chanti, 8 months pregnant, contracted pneumonia. (http://citipointechurch.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/citipointe-turns-blind-eye-to-chantis.html)
Her elevated temperature posed a threat to the well-being of her
soon-to-be-born baby(Poppy) but not even a potentially life-threatening
scenario was going to deflect Citipointe from its determination to keep the
family as poor as possible in order to be able to use this poverty as a reason
to continue to detail Rosa and Chita. Let me quote from Rebecca Brewer’s email
of 24th Oct 2008:
“Regarding continued support
to Chanti, we are unable to assist with distributing this sort of aid. Our
focus is to assist the children in our care as needed and the work we do with
the parents is limited. If we were to be seen giving handouts to one individual
parent it could prove very disruptive to the rest of the community.”
This
was totally contrary to what Pastor Ramsey, Helen Shields and Rebecca Brewer
had told both Chanti and myself. It is also contrary to what Citipointe claims
on its website.
There
is another aspect of this 24th Oct 2008 email that is of interest.
At the time I was unaware of the fraudulent nature of the 31st July
2008 ‘contract’. Ms Brewer writes:
“Regarding taking Rosa and
Cheata out for a day with their mother, unfortunately we are unable to
accommodate this request. Our policies require that the children in our care
remain in the custody of our staff members at all times. I’m sure you
understand the need for us to maintain strict guidelines and policies to ensure
the safety of all of the children in our care.”
At
the time she wrote these words, Ms Brewer knew that Citipointe had no legal
right to be holding Rosa and Chita and, hence, no legal right to be refusing to
allow the girls to go out for the day with their mother.
(7)
Citipointe church, whilst providing not $1 in financial support for the family,
has exploited Rosa and Chita by presenting the girls to the world as ‘victims
of human trafficking.’ This is a lie. A lie of enormous proportions –
perpetrated by Citipointe to raise money for the church through donations and
sponsorships. Despite its being fraudulent, the 31st July 2008
‘contract’ makes abundantly clear that it was poverty and not victimhood of any
kind that resulted in Chanti and Chhork being offered assistance by the church.
As
for Pastor Brian Mulheran, I have already referred to him as a ‘Pentecostal
thug’. If this is not enough to initiate defamation proceedings, perhaps the
following will make it easier for Citipointe’s lawyers. First, a quote from
Pastor Mulheran’s letter of 21st Feb 2013:
“Using
the law is the last thing that we want to see happen, because for you to be
convicted of a crime and serve a sentence may mean that you will never have the
opportunity to re-enter Cambodia again.”
It
is statements such as this that give mafias of all different kinds their
deserved reputation for intimidation – “We would hate to see your shop burn
down or anything unpleasant to happen to your children!” The clear purpose of Pastor Mulheran’s letter was
to intimidate me into silence. I was interfering with the church’s
child-stealing scam.
The
recent flurry of legal activity in Cambodia (in the form of spurious charges
brought against me by Citipointe) is making real what Pastor Mulheran
threatened – namely my potential arrest, jailing and being banned from
travelling to Cambodia.
Pastor
Mulheran has known all along that Citipointe had no legal right to remove Rosa
and Chita in 2008 and so has been part of the kidnapping and detention scam
from the outset. He, Pastor Leigh Ramsey, Rebecca Brewer and Helen Shields
should all be charged with whatever the appropriate charge in Australia is for
deceiving Chanti into signing a fraudulent ‘contract’, lying about its contents
and then using a document with no legal standing to justify the church’s
continued detention of Rosa and Chita.
Please,
Minister, bring this five year long running farce to an end and insist that
Citipointe and the Global Development Group provide Chanti, Chhork and myself
with a copy of the MOU the church insists gave it the right to as it did in
2008. It is not appropriate that tax-deductible Australian dollars be used to
break up families and to indoctrinate children into the Christian faith.
If
Citipointe and the Global Development Group cannot demonstrate, by producing
the MOU, that the church was acting legally in 2008, the tax-deductible status
of both NGOs should be terminated by AusAID. If Citipointe and the Global
Development Group can demonstrate the legality of the church’s removal of Rosa
and Chita in 2008 I expect to hear from their lawyers in the not-too-distant
future.
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
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