# 118 Charity Navigator a scam

Dear Scott Neeson

How can you, with a straight face, declare that Charity Navigator has given the Cambodian Children’s Fund a 100% rating in the ‘transparency and accountability’ category! 

CCF runs in a fog of secrecy. You never answer any questions at all – not just from me but from any journalists.

As you know, as I know, as anyone with an IQ over 100 can figure out for themselves, Charity Navigator is a scam. Comments critical of CCF are deleted almost immediately.

Does Charity Navigator charge CCF to delete negative comments? If so, what a wonderful a wonderful way to squeeze money out of NGOs eager to be at the top of the pile and be able to publish ‘results’ such as those to be found above.

It is very easy to publish whatever lie you like on a social network site, as is the case here on CCF’s Facebook page. It is also very easy, thanks to Google, for any lies launched into cyberspace to be found and exposed by anyone with the most basic of ‘Google-search’ skills.

It doesn’t take long, for instance, to find this from the Vancouver Sun last year:

“Neeson had been travelling in Asia in 2003 after leaving 20th Century Fox, where he had made more than 200 films in 10 years, including Titanic and Braveheart.”

This information would, no doubt, impress many a potential donor of sponsor.

“Scott Neeson has made 200 films! Wow!”

A little more Google research would reveal to potential donor of sponsor that you have not, in fact, made one film. You were involved in the marketing of Hollywood movies. Perhaps even 200 of them. A potential donor of sponsor might feel justified, at this point, to ask:

“If Mr neeson plays fast and loose with the truth about the 200 films he has made, can I believe anything he says?”

A potential donor of sponsor, armed with a couple of typing fingers and with access to Google, could also learn from the internet that:

“…for every unit sold (by a construction company in Canada), a new 130-square-foot home worth $2,500 will be built in Steung Meanchey to house families who eke out a living on the garbage dump.”

Mmmm, very impressive. Canadian home builders donating houses to poor Cambodians who work in a rubbish dump.

Well, not quite. The homes given to CCF are not passed on to poor homeless Cambodians . CCF rents these homes to the families whose children are in CCF residential care. The land on which the houses are built belongs to you/CCF so there is no chance that these people will ever own them. They will, for as long as they live in them, have you as their landlord.

If potential sponsors and donors are vigilant, they might even stumble upon this blog and learn that perhaps not everything that appears in cyberspace about Scott Neeson and the Cambodian Children’s Fund is necessarily true. They would also discover that the guy writing the blog has been variously described as someone who hates Scott Neeson, is a wanker, a nutter, a cunt, a ‘looser’, a ‘kiddie fiddler’ a slug and many other unpleasant things. Maybe all or some of them are true?

In this new digital age our hypothetical potential donor or sponsor is free to read as much or as little as s/he likes of this blog and form an opinion about both the blogger and CCF. And, of course, yourself.

This is democracy in practice. Sometimes harsh, yes, but the aim of journalists and bloggers (and of course documentary filmmakers) is to hold people in positions of power accountable for how they wield that power. And it is up to other journalists, bloggers and filmmakers to hold each other accountable. (In this instance, me.)

This is the way the system works. Or should work. If I make statements here that are factually incorrect these should be pointed out to me and if I persist in making false statements I should be exposed as a liar. I should not be allowed to get away with it.

In practice the various Trolls that espouse your cause on this blog rarely, if ever, attack me on the basis that I have been factually incorrect and pointing out to me why. No, the abuse is almost always personal – the belief being, I guess, that if I can be discredited as (see list above), then all that I write becomes questionable.

This may work for some potential sponsors and donors but the more discerning ones and, I suspect, the ones with the deepest pockets, are going to look beyond the abuse to the facts. And, if they wish to be careful about which charity they give their money to, they will ask you questions. Lots of questions.

The Neeson Trolls tell me, often, that you are too busy a man to bother reading the nonsense I write here. You and I know that this is not true. The only way it could be true is if you simply refuse to open any email from me; if Bob Tufts (board member) refuses to open any email from me.

The tide of history is against you, Scott. In the not-too-distant future running an orphanage will not be seen as an asset but as a liability. OK, you don’t run an orphanage. You merely have 500 or 700 kids living in dormitories who have mums and dads. Call them what you will, these kids are effectively living as orphans and being presented to potential sponsors and donors as kids who would have no future if not rescued by you. Not true. You could be ‘rescuing’ entire families, revitalizing communities. This is the way of the future and it would be great if you could get on board. You clearly have the marketing skills to take CCF in a new direction and take your sponsors and donors with you.

# 117 Closing down fake 'orphanages' and 'rescue homes'

HE Vong Soth

Ministry of Social Affairs,

Veteran and Youth Rehabilitation

#788, Monivong Blvd.

Phnom Penh

Cambodia

11^th May 2015

Dear Minister

When will the Ministry of Social Affairs close down fake ‘orphanages’ in Cambodia?

When will the Ministry of Social Affairs tell NGOs running fake ‘orphanages’ that they must return ‘orphans’ to their families?

Why does the Ministry of Social Affairs allow NGOs to operate ‘orphanages’ in which 75% of the children have at least one living parent and in which close to 100% of children have families that could care for them if they had the appropriate support?

Fake ‘orphanages’ can be broken into three categories. They are run by:

(a) unscrupulous NGOs exploiting poor Cambodians to make a profit.

(b) evangelical Christians who force Cambodian children to abandon their Buddhist religion and culture

and

(c) foreigners who believe Cambodian parents are incapable caring for their own children.

All three categories of NGO are exploiting the material poverty of the Cambodian people and using images of children to induce well-meaning sponsors and donors to open their hearts and their wallets.

When will this exploitation end?

When the Ministry of Social Affairs does close fake orphanages, you need to take into account that many NGOs do not refer to the children in their institutional care as ‘orphans’ but do treat them as ‘orphans’.  

In the case of Citipointe Church’s ‘SHE Rescue Home’, run by evangelical Christians from Brisbane, Australia, Pastor Leigh Ramsay refers to the girls in institutional care as ‘victims of human trafficking’ – despite the fact that very few, if any, of the girls in the church’s care have been rescued from the sex trade.

Citipointe church tricks materially poor parents into placing their thumb prints on a ‘contact’ they cannot read and do not understand. The church then tells  the parents that Citipointe now has legal custody of their daughters. The parents, who have no idea of their legal rights, believe that they have no choice but to give up their daughters.

 This is a form of kidnapping and is contrary to Cambodia’s Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation:

Article 8:Definition of Unlawful Removal

The act of unlawful removal removal in this act shall mean to:

1)    Remove a person from his/her current place of residence to a place under the actor’s or a third persons control by means of force, threat, deception, abuse of power, or enticement, or

2)    Without legal authority or any other legal justification to do so to take a minor person under general custody or curatorship or legal custody away from the legal custody of the parents, care taker or guardian.

Article 9: Unlawful removal, inter alia, of Minor

A person who unlawfully removes a minor or a person under general custody or curatorship or legal custody shall be punished with imprisonment for 2 to 5 years.

Why are the Christians such as Pastor Leigh Ramsey not charged in accordance with Cambodian law with the illegal removal of children from their families?

Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children’s Fund, run by another Australian, is yet another fake orphanage. Mr Neeson does not refer to the 700 or so children he has in institutional care as ‘orphans’. They are presented to donors and sponsors as children who do not have parents who can take care of them. This is not true. These children have very poor parents who require financial assistance when they fall upon hard times or because they are locked in a poverty cycle that they cannot extricate themselves from.

The Cambodian Children’s Fund takes advantage of the vulnerability of these very poor families by offering to help take care of their children. The parents think that this is a very generous offer and do not hesitate to sign a ‘contract’ given to them by Mr Neeson. Once the ‘contract’ has been signed, however, Mr Neeson, who does not provide the parents with a copy of it, tells the parents that he now has control of their children. If the parents want their children returned to their care have nowhere to turn for assistance when Mr Neeson refuses to do so.

I believe it to be essential, in protecting the rights of both parents and children, that parents be allowed to retain copies of any contracts they enter into with NGOs such as Citipointe church and the Cambodian Children’s Fund. The parents should be encouraged to show copies of these contracts to others who can offer them expert advice on the fairness or unfairness of the terms and conditions contained in them. Parents need to be informed that they have a right for their children to be returned to their care if they wish; that the contracts they have signed do not give an NGO to take control of the children’s lives.

Whilst requesting that Mr Neeson return the 700 fake ‘orphans’ in his care to their families you might ask him also to explain why it is that he tells the US Tax office it costs the Cambodian Children’s Fund $4,000 each year to provide accommodation and education to one child. As you know, $4,000 is more than double the amount of money it would take to support the entire family of one child in institutional care.

Scott Neeson will tell anyone who is prepared to listen that he is very well connected to powerful people in the Cambodian government. This may well be the case but these ‘powerful people’ should be ashamed of themselves if they are aiding and abetting in the break up of Cambodian families.

Future generations of children removed from their families by unscrupulous NGOs will one day ask you and others in your government, “Why did you allow this to happen?”

All NGOs running orphanages, even if they do not use the word ‘orphan’ should to told to present your Ministry, in the near future, with a detailed plan of:

(a) How they intend to re-integrate these fake orphans back into their families and communities over the next year

and

(b) How they intend to assist these children from materially poor families in the years to come.

It will be interesting to see how many of these NGOs continue with their ‘charitable’ work under these circumstances. I suspect that many of them will close their doors and move to another part of the world where they can steal the children of materially poor people with impunity. This will almost certainly be the case for evangelical Christian NGOs if they no longer have the opportunity to force their Christian beliefs on Cambodian children.

I find it hard to see what benefits there are for Cambodia in allowing the exploitation of Cambodia’s poor in this way. Yes, there may be some corrupt officials whose incomes are boosted by turning a blind eye to the clear breaches of Cambodian law practiced by these NGOs but Cambodian society, Cambodian culture loses out by having so many of its young people alienated from their families, their villages, their culture and religion whilst unscrupulous NGOs either make a lot of money or win souls for Jesus Christ.

I hope that the day comes when these children, removed from their families in a manner that is at times illegal and at others immoral, take the NGOs responsible to court and sue them for the emotional damage they have inflicted on themselves and their families.

The policy of removing children from their families in the belief that it was in the best interests of the children to be institutionalized, was tried in Australia for more than a century. This experiment in social engineering  failed so badly, caused so much emotional and psychological damage, that the Australian government had to apologize, a few years ago, for the creation of what we refer to in Australia as a ‘Stolen Generation’.

There is a ‘Stolen Generation’ of children being created in Cambodia and history will either look back on you as the person who brought this cruel practice to an end or as one of those who perpetuated it.

best wishes

James Ricketson

# 116 Cambodian British Embassy commits its latest lie about the destruction of David Fletcher's passport to an official document.

Phillip Hammond

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London

SW1A                        

6^th May 2015                                                                          

Dear Mr Hammond

re David Fletcher’s passport

One day before an election that may well see you lose your job you will, of course,  be preoccupied with more important matters than the fate of the UK citizen your government has written off as expendable this past five years – Mr David Fletcher.

Yesterday, in prison, I met the Khmer gentleman who works for the British Embassy in Cambodia whom I met on my first visit last year – the man who took deep offence to my use of the ‘f’ word all those months ago. My use of this word led to some huffing and puffing on the part of FCO spin doctors regarding their duty of care to FCO staff. This same duty of care does not, alas, extend to citizens of the United Kingdom accused of crimes that they were physically incapable of committing.

I do not know this gentleman’s name but he seems to be a nice enough chap. He confirmed what has been obvious to Mr Fletcher for five years: the British Embassy will not lift a finger to assist him receive a fair trial – regardless of the cogent evidence the FCO has had in its possession for five years that Mr Fletcher is innocent of the crime of rape. The Embassy will not even send an observer to a trial, should Mr Fletcher be fortunate enough to eventually be granted one. The FCO has washed its hands. Well, almost. This Khmer gentleman from the Embassy also passed on the FCO’s wish to speak with Mr Fletcher’s lawyer! Why, one has to wonder!

The FCO’s decision to wash its hands in Mr Fletcher’s fate comes as no surprise. Indeed, in a way it is a relief to have had the FCO’s total lack of a duty of care for Mr Fletcher finally acknowledged by a member of Embassy staff.

I wonder if citizens of the UK travelling abroad realize that if they get into legal trouble their Embassy would not lift a finger to help them – regardless of the evidence of their innocence.

The purpose of the British Embassy visit today was to give Mr Fletcher a letter from the Embassy in Cambodia. This is a version of the letter that he has been asking for this past 6 months – evidence that the British Embassy willfully and knowingly destroyed evidence that it knew was vital to Mr Fletcher’s defense. Whilst this letter is demonstrably factually untrue, at least we now have in writing, with an official stamp, a document that attests to the blatant FCO lies told in relation to the fate of Mr Fletcher’s passport.

This 5^th May letter seem to be a response to my letter of 27^th. April 2015  which reads:

Dear Mr Hammond

I have managed to sort one tranche of the documents provided to Mr Fletcher by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office last week. Namely, pages 153 – 378.

There should be 225 pages in this tranche but there are 48 pages missing. The missing pages are:

165,166,167, 171,181,182,186,192, 193, 198, 200,203,206,207, 210, 211, 212, 219, 220, 223, 225,  226, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 247, 251, 253, 254, 257, 258, 260, 300, 338, 351, 364, 365, 366, 368,

The following 12 pages have been effectively 100% redacted

256,272, 277, 285, 287, 292, 294, 304, 306, 315 362, 375

The total of missing or 100% redacted pages is 60 - roughly one quarter of the pages that should have been delivered to Mr Fletcher.

What possible reason could the Foreign & Commonwealth Office have for redacting 25% of correspondence between Mr Fletcher and members of FCO staff?

Could you please ask your staff to either (a) supply the missing pages or (b) explain why they have been omitted or redacted?

Today Mr Fletcher gave me a note that he wants to have passed on to those who have declared that they have evidence of his guilt of ‘grooming young girls’. As you know, it is not ‘grooming’ that Mr Fletcher was charged with but rape. However, these charges of alleged ‘grooming’ have, I believe, played a significant role in painting Mr Fletcher as someone who might have groomed young girls or would be capable of so doing.

Given the proximity of Mr Fletcher’s court appearance on 7^th May he is, yet again, asking Action Pour les Enfants, SISHA, CEOP and Naly Pilorge at LICADHO to present their evidence of his ‘grooming’ to the court.

I trust that the relevant FCO staff are in the process of arranging for a letter that Mr Fletcher can produce in court on 7^th May to the effect that his passport was destroyed by the FCO. For the purposes of this exercise it matters not at all whether or not the passport was destroyed by accident or on purpose.

best wishes

Consider now what I wrote to you on 16^th Jan 2015 in relation to the conflicting stories circulating within the FCO regarding Mr Fletcher’s passport: 

Acting Director of Consular Services Ross Allen plays fast and loose with the truth in relation to the cancellation and destruction of Mr Fletcher’s passport.

This is now beyond dispute, based on documents that Mr Fletcher was provided with by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in December 2014.

Here is Mr  Ross Allen’s account of when and how Mr Fletcher’s passport came into the possession of the British Embassy in Thailand in July 2012:

“When a British passport is found and handed into an Embassy, the policy of Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) is that the passport will not be returned to the holder because we do not know who has had possession of the passport in the intervening period. During this time the passport may have been tampered with, cloned or otherwise compromised and therefore have become a security risk. Mr Fletcher’s passport was received at the British Embassy with no accompanying explanation. I am therefore satisfied that consular staff acted appropriately in cancelling the passport and returning it to HMPO.”

How can this assertion of Ross Allen’s be reconciled with FCO documents that make it quite clear that Mr Fletcher’s passport was in the British Embassy’s possession on 28^th July 2010 and 23^rd may 2011. Two extracts:

28^th July 2010

“Will take a/n’s passport to the IDC  tomorrow so that he can draw his money from the Western Union. Once we get hold on that amount the deportation will be in place. I am trying to find out about the flight cost and its availability and it is likely to be early next week.”

23^rd May 2011

“I told Mr Fletcher that we were now holding his passport…”

The only way that Ross Allen’s account could be true is if, some time after 23^rd May 2011, Mr Fletcher’s passport left the British Embassy in Thailand, was somehow lost, then “found and handed into” the embassy “with no accompanying explanation” a little over a year later! For this scenario to be credible, the following questions must be asked:

- Why, at some point after 23^rd May 2011, did Mr Fletcher’s passport leave the embassy?

- Where was the passport sent? To whom?

When Mr Fletcher’s passport was “found and handed into” the British Embassy it was known to embassy staff that Mr Fletcher was in a Thai prison, that he was fighting an extradition order from Cambodia and that his passport contained evidence that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the alleged rapes – March 2009. This leads to the question:

- Who issued the order that Mr Fletcher’s passport be cancelled and then destroyed?

I doubt very much that the cancellation and destruction of a passport happens without someone quite senior within the embassy signing off on the process. Who was this person?

I suspect that the destruction of a passport would not happen without the knowledge of the Ambassador to Thailand. Is this so? If so, Ambassador Mark Kent knowingly destroyed evidence that Mr Fletcher required for his defense in court in Cambodia.

Justice demands that precisely what happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport be investigated by a body independent of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am not familiar enough with the British legal system to know what body should conduct such an investigation but I would have thought, at the very least, that the matter should be referred to the police – the destruction of evidence required by Mr Fletcher in his legal defense.

On reflection, there is one more way in which this strange sequence of events vis a vis Mr Fletcher’s passport could be explained. It is not particularly credible but it is as follows:

Some time after 23^rd May 2011 Mr Fletcher’s passport was stolen from the British Embassy in Thailand. The passport was held by persons unknown until July 2012 when it was handed in to the Embassy by persons unknown.

Given that the FCO, at every level – including Ross Allen and yourself – refuse to account for the whereabouts of Mr Fletcher’s passport between May 2011 and July 2012 the possibility exists that the FCO, embarrassed by the theft of Mr Fletcher’s passport from the British Embassy, has spun a story to account for its disappearance that it has hoped would deflect any further questions. It has not. Through me, acting with Mr Fletcher’s power of attorney, I have continued to ask questions. The FCO’s response has been not only to refuse to recognize this power of attorney but to refuse to communicate with me in any way. The same has applied with the Ombudsman, whose office has also refused to communicate with me until recently. It then said that it would communicate with me if I redacted, on my blog, the names of those who had played a role in the denial to Mr Fletcher of justice and answers to questions.

Under these circumstances Mr Fletcher has little option but, through me with his power of attorney, to ask the UK police to commence an investigation into how his passport was stolen from the British Embassy.

On my return to Australia I will make contact with the relevant UK police and ask them to investigate impartially.

I hope, in the next few days, that the United Kingdom acquires a Foreign Secretary committed to transparency, accountability and the provision of a duty of care to UK citizens who find themselves in a legal quandary in a country in which there is little or no commitment to the rule of law.

best wishes

James Ricketson