# 199 Response to Scott Neeson's 'Fact Sheet' # 1

Dear Scott

With the publication of your ‘fact sheet’ you have given up the pretense that you do not read this blog.

This is a good thing.

We can now have a dialogue in the open; based on verifiable facts.  Anyone who might be interested in whether it is you playing fast and loose with the truth or myself will have some ‘facts’ that can be independently verified.

Let’s start with one of your first observations, about David Fletcher. Do they reflect the truth?

You write:

Mr Ricketson’s role as “advocate for a convicted rapist”

Many of Mr Ricketson’s blogs attacking Scott Neeson and CCF are linked to his adopted role as “advocate for a convicted rapist named David Fletcher”.

As anyone who wishes to read this blog carefully will discover, this is a misrepresentation of the truth. For two years I have advocated Mr Fletcher’s…

 …right to have a fair trial in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure.

This is quite different to:

“…advocat(ing) for a convicted rapist named David Fletcher”

Similarly, I would advocate the right of Khmer Rouge cadres accused of genocide to a fair trial. This does not mean I am advocating for men and women accused of genocide!

In a fair trial Mr Fletcher would be able to present evidence in his defense, to call witnesses and to address the court. He has been denied these basic legal rights.

Six years after his arrest, Mr Fletcher has:

(1)  not yet been interviewed by the police in the relation to the alleged rape.

(2)  Not been interviewed by an Investigating Judge in relation to the charges laid against him.

The trial at which Mr Fletcher was found guilty was held in secret. He had no idea a trial was being held and only learned of the outcome when it was reported in newspapers. (I have had this same experience at the hands of the so-called Cambodian Justice system!)

The media and general public were not allowed to be present at this secret trial; held in secret at the request of Action Pour les Enfants.

Despite the lengths taken by APLE and others with a vested interest in the outcome to keep the evidence presented from public view, court documents reveal that it was acknowledged, by the court, that Yang Dany (the alleged rape victim) was still a virgin; that she had not had sexual intercourse.

The Phnom Penh  Municipal Court judges, confronted with this awkward evidence, declared that, after two alleged ‘brutal rapes’ Yang Dany’s hymen must have grown back.

This assertion could not be challenged by any expert witness called by Mr Fletcher. It would be a few years until I obtained copies of court documents and was able to inform him of Yang Dany’s virginity.

You know all this, Scott. You know also that Yang Dany has confirmed, in interviews with myself in the presence of other journalists, that she was not raped; that she and her mother, Sekun, were informed (some weeks after his arrest in Thailand) that in the event Yang Dany charged Mr Fletcher with rape, she and her mother could sue him for $30,000 in damages.

It is to Yang Dany’s credit that she refused this offer for three weeks after Mr Fletcher was arrested. She and her mother eventually succumbed, however. Particularly for her mother, Sekun, $30,000 is a lot of money for a scavenger whose annual income is around $1,000. This is all well-documented.

Such offers of money to the families of children allegedly sexually abused is a recurring feature of the Cambodian Justice system.

“Mr Fletcher, “a notorious British paedophile” was convicted of child sex offences in the UK before moving to Cambodia to establish an unregistered children’s NGO in Phnom Penh.”

Mr Fletcher has never been charged with or found guilty of being a ‘paedophile’ – either in the United Kingdom or Cambodia.

This “a notorious British paedophile” is sensational journalism at its worst.

What Mr Fletcher was found guilty of was ‘statutory rape’. Entering into a consensual sexual relationship with  15 year old girl (just shy of 16) was illegal in the UK and Mr Fletcher was, quite rightly and justifiably, found guilty and received a jail sentence.

There is a difference between “statutory rape” and “rape” but it does not suite your purposes to acknowledge this. You employ such verbal trickery to deceive. Your use of the word ‘gifted’ to imply the ‘giving’ of houses to poor families is another case in point – a subject to which I will return in due course.

“He was convicted by Cambodian authorities for the rape of a 16 year old girl in 2013. Mr Fletcher was arrested in Phnom Penh after Cambodian police built up a file of evidence showing that Fletcher had used his charity to groom young girls – and also their families – with the intention of having sex with them“.

At the risk of belabouring the point, no evidence other than Yang Dany’s statement to the court was tendered as evidence at the secret trial to support the proposition that Mr Fletcher had raped her. Indeed, if he had been able to present a defense to the court Mr Fetcher would have been able to demonstrate that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the alleged offenses – until, that is, the British Embassy destroyed his passport by ‘mistake’.

As for the Cambodian police having built up a file of evidence, this is not supported by any of the court documents. No evidence was presented to the court by the police (or APLE, CEOP of SISHA)  in support of the proposition that he had been grooming young girls. This ‘grooming’ allegation is one that you yourself made in an interview with Andrew Drummond in June 2010.  The relevant quote here is:

 “There is little doubt Fletcher devotes his time to grooming young girls….The fact is these children can be bought. It’s difficult to stop it. The British Embassy have been told about Fletcher. Many organizations have files on him, but nothing has happened. If you can get this guy sent packing you are doing a service to the children here.”

As you know, Mr Fletcher was ‘sent packing’ one month later  when he was arrested, without charge in Thailand at the request of the Cambodian authorities. Mr Fletcher has been in jail ever since.

I have invited you many times to either provide evidence in support of your allegation that Mr Fletcher as ‘grooming’ young girls. Alternatively, you could declare that Andrew Drummond had misquoted you.

I ask you again:

“Do you, Scott Neeson, have any evidence that Mr Fletcher was grooming young girls or did Andrew Drummond misquote you?”

“If you have evidence will you, at this late date, present it to the police so that Mr Fletcher can be charged with ‘grooming’.”

Given that CCF has its own resident lawyer, Alan Lemon, it does not speak well of Alan’s expertize that he allowed the following statement to be published in your ‘fact sheet’:

“ Fletcher had used his charity to groom young girls – and also their families – with the intention of having sex with them“.

Such a statement, presented by  a lawyer in a properly constituted court of law would, quite rightly, be treated with derision. And Alan Lemon should know that accusing Mr Fletcher of ‘grooming’ in the absence of evidence is defamatory. In Australia or in any country in which the rule of law applied, you could (and would) be sued for defamation.

To quote from your ‘fact sheet’ again:

“Due to the fact Scott Neeson had registered concerns after a 17 year old CCF student became “engaged” to Mr Fletcher (in his 60s at the time), Mr Ricketson falsely alleged that Mr Neeson had become involved in a conspiracy against Mr Fletcher. Mr Ricketson has agitated over many years for Mr Fletcher to be released from jail, consistently and falsely blaming Scott Neeson for his imprisonment.

The most obvious response is:

I have never advocated “for Mr Fletcher to be released from jail.”

Not once this past two years. This is you, again, Scott, playing word games with the intention of deceiving. I have advocated Mr Fletcher’s right to a fair trial. I have also made it clear, on many occasions, that were he to be found guilty on the basis of evidence, in a properly constituted trial, his 10 year jail sentence would be deserved and I would support it.

A point worth making:

17 year old student (Yang Dany) had made sexual advances to you, as you acknowledge in an email. You quite rightly rebuffed her advances. You were clearly aware of the risks inherent in whatever it was she was up to in making such advances and wanted nothingto do with her. Yet you were quite happy to believe her when she claimed that Mr Fletcher was her fiancé!? Did it not occur to you that perhaps Yang Dany was being less than truthful with you? Awe you not a little skeptical about what she was telling you?

As for the ‘conspiracy’ you refer to, my mentions of ‘conspiracy’ relate to the silence on the part of all those who had good reason to have serious doubts that Mr Fletcher  had raped Yang Dany. I am referring here to Steve Morrish, of SISHA, Thierry Darnaudet of APLE and the members of CEOP. All three NGOs had, for a couple of years, been searching for evidence that Mr Fletcher was grooming young girls or that he had sexually abused young girls. Between them they could find no evidence. This is clear from the documents presented to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. The ‘evidence’ of rape (Yang Dany’s statement to the police) did not emerge until after Mr Fletcher had left  Cambodia; after the $30,000 was dangled tantalizingly in front of Yang Dany and her mother.

“An officer of the UK’s Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has publicly denounced Mr Ricketson’s  ‘ongoing deranged views on those who would protect the world from child abusers.’”

Which ‘officer’ made this statement? My own correspondence with CEOP can be found at:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/27-trying-to-get-answers-from-child.html

And:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/68-jim-gamble-reality-tv-star-and-head.html

All that I have written here can be fact-checked by anyone who might be interested in finding out who the liar is – you or myself. It is unfortunate that there has been, to date, no journalist, no newspaper, no NGO, nobody (and no body) interested in such fact-checking.

Given that Cambodia’s prisons contain many men and women who have been denied due legal process and remain in jail only because they cannot come up with the money necessary to buy their way out of jail, this lack of interest in Mr Fletcher’s plight is understandable. The same cannot be said of other instances in which you lies have real consequences in the lives of families that come into contact with CCF.

NEXT: Scott Neeson, CCF and educating Cambodia’s next generation of leaders.