# 88 Phnom Penh Post refuses to retract and apologise for publishing a factually incorrect article that has destroyed a man's professional and personal life

Chad Williams

Editor

Phnom Penh Post

25^th Jan 2015

Dear Chad

If the Phnom Penh Post cannot be relied upon to accurately report cases involving allegations of rape and sexual abuse, can the Post be relied upon to report anything accurately?

I am writing to you again regarding the Phnom Penh Post’s factually incorrect published report that William Mathieson (Liam) Miller had been charged with rape.

I have written to you three times about this now. You have not responded. Nor have you responded in any way to Liam Miller’s letters and emails.

I also wrote to you last year in relation to a similarly false report regarding two rape charges laid against David Fletcher. You did not reply.

It is in the nature of fast turnover journalism, with deadlines to meet, that errors of fact can be made. Once such errors have been pointed out to journalists, editors and newspaper proprietors, however, they should be corrected immediately and an apology made that is appropriate to the error. This is especially the case when factually incorrect reportage has a seriously damaging effect on the life of an individual about whom a story has been written.  

In the case of Liam Miller the results of the Post’s factually incorrect article, available through google search, have been disastrous. It has destroyed Mr Miller’s career  (he is now unemployable) and caused painful rifts within his family, members of which believe that the Phnom Penh Post report about his being charged with rape is accurate.

These family rifts could be healed if there was public acknowledgement, from the Post, that the article regarding Mr Miller’s having been charged with rape was totally untrue.  The same applies to his ability to find work. 

Regardless of whether or not the Post’s ‘rape story’ is defamatory, journalistic integrity and empathy for the damage done to Liam Miller’s professional and personal life should be sufficient for you, as editor, to print a retraction and publish a public apology.

Let me put this another way. How would you feel, Chad, if an article appeared in a newspaper anywhere in the world, available through google search, in which it was stated that you had been charged with rape? You are no longer able to get a job working as a journalist (does any newspaper wish to employ a journalist charged with rape?) You have court documents to prove that the story is untrue. You write to the editor of the newspaper that published the article, supplying him with the relevant court documents. They contain clear evidence of the article’s factual inaccuracy. The editor does not respond to your correspondence in any way. He ignores you, as you have Mr Miller. You approach google and ask for the factually incorrect article to be removed. Google refuses to do so, informing you that it is up to the newspaper that published the article to remove it. The newspaper refuses to do so. You are not just unemployable; members of your family, believing the story must be true, won’t speak to you anymore.  You have become personal non grata. Your life has become an ongoing nightmare.

Imagine this happening to you, Chad, and perhaps you will appreciate Liam Miller’s predicament – a predicament that you are in a position to alleviate through a public acknowledgement that the Post article was inaccurate. I believe that you have a professional obligation to do so;  that both your professional and personal integrity demand that you  retract the story, apologize to Liam Miller and make the article unavailable to be found through  a google search.

If you do not, it will be difficult to avoid concluding that the Post has a policy of never admitting to making errors or getting its facts wrong. This is a worrying conclusion to arrive at given how reliant readers of the Post are on the presumption that stories published by it are accurate!

I have included, below, my own attempts to communicate with you about factually incorrect Post articles. That you don’t bother to respond in any way certainly suggests that accuracy in reporting is not a top priority for the Phnom Penh Post under your stewardship as editor.

Chad Williams

Editor in Chief Department

Phnom Penh Post

Charlotte Pert

Editorial

Phnom Penh Post

2^nd Dec 2014

Dear Chad and Charlotte

On 14^th Nov I wrote to David Boyle the following:

Dear David Boyle

On 21^st March 2011, the Phnom Penh Post published an article entitled “Thailand To Extradite UK Rape Suspect”, written by Cheang Sokha. The article contained some inaccuracies that have never been corrected.

“THAILAND has reportedly ordered the extradition of a British man wanted in Cambodia on charges of sexually assaulting two underage girls.”

Mr Fletcher was not and has never been charged with “sexually assaulting two underage girls”

“David Fletcher, 65, fled the Kingdom last year after the British tabloid The Sunday Mirror alleged that he was using a charity he had founded, the Rubbish Dump project, to gain access to young girls at the Stung Meanchey dump site in Phnom Penh.”

Mr Fletcher did not ‘flee’ Cambodia. He had arranged to leave Cambodia well before Andrew Drummond’s article was published. This is well documented.

“Samleang Seila, director of the child rights group Action Pour Les Enfants, said Fletcher was set to stand trial at Phnom Penh Municipal Court on March 31 for allegedly raping two underage girls. Cambodian and Thai officials are still in the process of arranging Fletcher’s return, Samleang Seila said.”

Either Samleang Seila has been misquoted by the Phnom Penh Post or he is a liar. Mr Fletcher has never been charged with “raping two underage girls.”

Given that Mr Fletcher was not charged with the rape of two girls, why has the Phnom Penh Post never questioned Samleang Seila about his false allegation and published a retraction? By allowing this information to remain in the public domain, uncorrected, the Phnom Penh Post has contributed to the destruction of Mr Fletcher’s reputation.

The rest of my letter to David can be found at:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/36-will-phnom-penh-post-correct-errors.html

I did not receive a response from David and nor has the Phnom Penh Post sought to correct information published in the newspaper that was demonstrably factually incorrect.

Nor has the Phnom Penh Post reported in any way on David Fletcher’s recent court appearance on 20^th Nov – despite having a journalist present in court. Why is this? Does the Phnom Penh Post believe that there is nothing newsworthy in a man being denied a trial by the same judges who, three weeks earlier, had promised him one?

At the very heart of this matter is the question:

Is a man accused of a crime in Cambodia entitled to a fair trial?

As we all know, innocent Cambodian men and women are denied the right to a fair trial every day. The difference between these cases and David Fletcher’s is that the Phnom Penh Post reports on the former but not the latter. Why?

Questions proliferate:

- Has the Phnom Penh Post thought to ask Thierry Darnaudet or Samleang Seila for their response to the allegation (made by Yang Dany herself) that their client was told to leave the country and not attend court?

- Has any Phnom Penh Post journalist thought to ask Thierry Darnaudet or Samleang Seila if Action Pour les Enfants paid the money required by Yang Dany to acquire a Cambodian passport at very short notice?

- Or, in the event that Yang Dany entered China illegally has any Phnom Penh Post journalist thought to ask Thierry Darnaudet or Samleang Seila if Action Pour les Enfants arranged to have her trafficked?

- Has the Phnom Penh Post thought to ask the Minister for Justice why it is that the same Phnom Penh Municipal Court judges who promised Mr Fletcher a re-trial on 27^th Oct 2014, denied him this trial on 20^th Nov 2014 and refused to look at any evidence that Mr Fletcher had in court with him or to even make a statement o the court?

- Has the Phnom Penh Post asked Naly Pilorge if she was a co-founder of APLE and, if so, why it is that she goes to such lengths to distance herself from the NGO; to ask whether she or LICADHO receive any financial remuneration from Actions Pour les Enfants?

Some important questions from June 2010 also remain unanswered and, it seems, unasked by anyone in the media:

- How was it, in the week after Andrew Drummond’s 20^th June 2010 article, David Fletcher had ceased to be (in Yang Dany’s own words) her ‘fiance’, ‘boyfriend’’ ‘sweetheart’ and ‘a good man’ and become a rapist?

- Has the Phnom Penh Post made any effort at all to understand what took place during that week to cause such a dramatic turnaround?  Might the prospect of earning $30,000 in compensation have influenced Kheang Sekun’s decision to press charges against Fletcher? Why was it that 18 year old Yang Dany did not press the charges but, with some reluctance, allowed her mother to do so?

- Is it pure coincidence that David Fletcher, with no evidence of any crime committed by him on 20^th June 2010, became a rapist one week after Scott Neeson’s comment to Andrew Drummond was published?

“If you can get this guy sent packing you are doing a service to the children here.” 

Does it not occur to the Phnom Penh Post that there are some striking similarities in so many cases that involve Action Pour les Enfants – men being convicted of rape when the medical evidence states that no rape took place?

The questions are legion but it seems that the Phnom Penh Post is loathe to ask any questions at all that might cast doubt of the honesty and integrity not just of APLE but of Scott Neeson.

The only way that David Fletcher can be guilty of raping Yang Dany is by accepting the proposition, presented by the judges at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, that a young woman’s hymen can grow back.

Whilst David Fletcher is entitled to a fair trial, there is an important principle involved here also – namely that all who appear before a Cambodian court are entitled to a fair trial whether they be Khmer or expatriate. By remaining silent in this case, when the evidence is overwhelmingly against the possibility that David Fletcher is guilty of rape, the Phnom Penh Post is giving a green light to APLE to continue to set up other men in the future – secure in the knowledge that the Post will not ask the tough questions that need to be asked of this NGO.

best wishes

NOTE

Samleang Seila’s declaration that Mr Fletcher had been charged with raping two underage girls is factually incorrect. Fletcher was charged with raping one underage girl – 17 year old Yang Dany. As Samleang Seila knew at the time he made this statement, Yang Dany’s allegation of rape was not backed up by medical evidence. Yang Dany was still a virgin – as Seila had known since Sept 2010.

Samleang Seila, along with Scott Neeson, is very clever in the way he uses (dare I say exploits) the media to defame men like Liam Willams and David Fletcher.

Once it has been widely reported that they have been charged with rape (whether it is true or not) this becomes accepted as fact by readers and the general public. This creates an atmosphere in which the facts of the matter, the guilt or innocence of the person so charged, becomes irrelevant. Both Neeson and Seila know that if they can successfully label someone as a ‘rapist’ no one will defend their right to a fair trial – not LICADHO, not ADHOC, not the embassy of the country from which the alleged rapist comes.

Either wittingly or unwittingly the Phnom Penh Post plays along with Neeson and Seila’s defamatory tactics by firstly printing factually incorrect articles and then by refusing to correct errors of fact when they are pointed out.

5^th Jan 2015

“Dear Chad

I am not sure if you are the right person to be directing this question at but, if you are not, could you please pass it on to the relevant person?

I have, on my blog in the past 24 hours, had a comment posted by a man by the name of Liam Miller. He alleges that the Phnom Penh Post published an article about him that was factually incorrect and defamatory; that the Post refused to retract the article.

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/76-when-it-comes-to-accusations-of.html

Does the Phnom Penh Post stand by the factual accuracy of the 2011 article? If not, will the Phnom Penh Post, even at this late date, publish a retraction and request of Google that it remove the article from its search engine?

best wishes

James Ricketson

Liam Miller’s letter to you, Chad, as editor of the Phnom Penh Post

"Dear Sir or Madam:

Regarding the false and defamatory article March 2011 re William Mathieson Miller

I now send you copies of the Siem Reap Court’s final judgment showing that I was completely exonerated of the charge of sexual harassment. (The editor declined a copy when I visited the office and asked for a retraction.)

“In fact” I was never charged with “rape or assault” but there was a case of sexual harassment being investigated, (I refer to page six of the investigating judge’s statement that I have sent to you) I was held in detention whilst the case was being investigated. The Cambodian Daily on the same day quoted the same police officer Sun Bungthorng named in your article saying that I was in detention and that it had not yet been decided what the charge would be. (I gave you the editor at the time a copy of this article while in your office). Your article is now shown on a google web search page in Vietnam under my name. I have tried to contact google without success and I understand that they require the originator to make the request to have it removed – the Phnom Penh Post.

The situation arose because of a dispute with my landlord regarding bills and a rent increase. The landlord had started a relationship with one of the girls (Pon Por aka Thai Duong). In fact she was the only one employed as a housemaid. Please also note that in the judge’s statement Pon Por aka Thai Duong said that the two men who picked her (up at her) office lied to her saying they were taking her home to have a discussion with her family were lawyers employed by the highly discredited NGO APLE Cambodia who were behind the whole investigation.

I trust that now you are in receipt of the facts you will take immediate steps to have google remove it from all their web search pages…I have never been convicted of any offence and have police clearance certificates to support this."

Chad Williams

Editor in Chief Department

Phnom Penh Post

6^th Jan 2015

Dear Chad

I have received no response to the message I sent to you yesterday re Liam Miller.

I am now in possession of both Mr Miller’s letter to the Phnom Penh Post and the Siem Reap Provincial Court of First Instance ‘Nonsuit Order’ dated March 12^th 2011.

In light of Mr Miller’s having not been charged with the offences the Phnom Penh Post reported (“rape, attempted rape and sexual assault”), will the Post be writing a retraction and an apology for the damage the article has done to Mr Miller’s reputation? And will the Post be requesting that Google remove the inaccurate and defamatory 14^th March article published two days after the ‘Nonsuit Order’ of 12^th March was handed down?

best wishes

9^th January 2015

Chad Williams

Editor in Chief Department

Editorial Edition

Post English

Dear Chad

My previous attempts to communicate with you via  the Post’s online ‘contact’ address have failed. My attempts to communicate with you via David Boyle, whose email address I do have, have failed also.

You will be well aware that there has never been any suggestion, in any police or court document, that William Mathieson Miller raped anyone. The very worst that was alleged was that Mr Miller may have touched a young woman’s hand inadvertently. In any event, all sexual harassment charges against him were found to be false – for reasons outlined by Judge Hok Pov in his summation of the case.

The Phnom Penh Post’s article has caused enormous damage to Mr Miller’s reputation, his employment prospects and his relationship with those close family members who believe that what the Phnom Penh Post published was true. Given that what was published was demonstrably not true I ask again, on Mr Miller’s behalf, that the Post apologize, issue a retraction and have the offending article removed from the internet such that it cannot be found through Google search.

best wishes

25^th Jan 2015

It is now 2 weeks since I sent my last email to you, Chad. You have not had the professional courtesy, one journalist to another, to respond in any way.

Do you believe, as editor, that the Phnom Penh Post is under an obligation to gets its facts right when reporting on crimes as serious as rape and sex abuse? It seems not!

best wishes

James Ricketson