# 205 More questions for Heather Graham, CCF board member

Dear Heather

It is more than two years since I first wrote to you alerting you, as a member of the CCF board, to Scott Neeson’s removal of children from their families. Here is a quote from that letter, the full text of which can be found below:

“You have jumped on the Scott Neeson Cambodian Children’s Fund bandwagon but I wonder, Heather, if you have asked enough questions (some of them tough ones) in order to find out what actually goes on at CCF? Of course, when you make a quick trip to Cambodia, you will be shown what Scott wants you to see, you will hear what Scott wants you to hear and you will be used (in a public relations sense) to get Scott’s message out to the world. The message is, in brief: “There are so many children in need, so many children without homes, so many children that need and deserve a decent education that CCF needs all the money it can raise.”  

Yes, there are many children with these needs. These children for the most part, have parents. They have mums and dad’s who love them; mums and dads who want to best for their children; mums and dad’s who cannot afford to feed their sons and daughters properly, to educate them; mums and dads who would welcome any assistance provided to the entire family – assistance that would keep the family together and not see their sons and daughters brought up by strangers in an institution and presented to donors and sponsors, to all intents and purposes, as ‘orphans’ rescued by the wonderful Scott Neeson who gave up his highly successful Hollywood career etc.

During your brief visits to Cambodia you will not meet or talk with the parents of children who were removed from their families under false pretenses and not returned when the parents asked Scott to return them. Yes, you will be taken to visit some families who have been (are being) helped by CCF but what about all the families still living in the most appalling of circumstances, working in the dump, whilst one member of the family is living in an what amounts to a CCF orphanage?”

I have written to you a few times since then. You have not responded in any way. This is true for your fellow board members also - Samuel Robinson, Bob Alexander and Bob Tufts. Questions from the media are not welcomed by either Scott Neeson or the CCF board. In the case of difficult questions from a media person such as myself, the answers to which would implicate all of you in serious charity fraud,  ham-fisted attempts are made to shoot the messenger.

Whether you like it or not you are now complicit in Scott Neeson and CCF charity fraud. There will be no consequences for CCF in Cambodia for this fraud. As you know there is no rule of law in this country. If you have money (and CCF has a lot of it) you can do pretty well whatever you like and no-one, including the Cambodian media (both Khmer and English language) and human rights organisations will say a word.

But you know all this or, if you do not, you have kept your eyes blissfully closed in the times you have visited Cambodia.

Knowing full well in advance that you will not be answering any questions (any more than your fellow board members will) I will, nonetheless place a few more questions on record.

Let’s start with Charam,  a poster boy for CCF’s success at creating Cambodia’s future leaders. Charam has recently wowed audiences in Australia with his charm and good looks and with the tearful way in which he tells his life story. And he has done the same in New York.

Just 10 days ago CCF posted, on its Facebook page, a photo of a very happy looking Charam “a truly remarkable young man” in a helicopter. CCF Facebook tells followers that Charam:

“works in hospitality at a cultural centre in Phnom Penh”

This reads well. It sounds impressive. However, to say that Charam “works in hospitality at a cultural centre in Phnom Penh” is more than a little disingenuous given that Charam works as a barman in an upmarket Expat bar/restaurant in Phnom Penh!

There is nothing wrong with working as a barman, of course, but for an organization proclaiming to be training Cambodia’s future leaders Charam’s story is far from being an example of success in this department. 

This is Scott the marketing man using slippery words to manufacture an “extraordinary” story that will have sponsors and donors reaching for their wallets.

Does it concern you at all, Heather,  that Charam is being exploited by CCF? That he is flown around the world (New York, Sydney), dressed up in a Western suit, to tell a story that reduces audiences to tears and has wealthy New Yorkers writing huge cheques? And what happens to Charam when each of these world money-raising tours comes to an end?

You know the answer. Until very recently Charam returned  to Phnom Penh to sleep in a crowded CCF dormitory (4 bunks, 10 boys!), as he has done for the past 10 years - despite having a mother and a father living elsewhere. (Charam is one of Scott's fake 'orphans'!)

Recently, as repayment to Charam for all the money his good looks and charm have generated for CCF over the years, he and his parents were allowed to live in one of the houses ‘gifted’ to poor families. (Another of Scott’s slippery use of words to crate the impression that the homes were given to poor families!) 

During the time that Charam was sleeping in his dormitory was CCF also helping out the rest of his family? Was there a good reason why Charam had to be removed from the care of his mother and father and taken into residential care? Have you ever seen a copy of the contract that Charam’s mum and dad signed with CCF before he was taken into care? To the best of your knowledge do Charam’s mum and dad have copies of this ‘contract’?

What impact do you think it has on the psyches of young CCF men and women when they are flown around the world, dressed up, put on display, asked to tell their stories to men and women in evening attire, at gala celebrity-studded events in the Big Apple, and then returned to their ordinary lives in CCF institutional care?

Do you and your fellow board members ever consider the possibility that there is something wrong with this? That it may amount to exploitation of children for financial gain?

I have a few more questions to add to those I have asked Samuel Robinson, Bob Alexander and Bob Tufts this past few days:

(1) Did the CCF board approve, in 2011, loans totalling $95,000 to 3 senior staff members - one of whom was the Country Manager (Kram Sok Channoeurn) – seen here in the photo of you, Scott, Charam and two CCF young women?  

(2) By the end of 2014 did the board approve of CCF’s holding just under $5m in land and $3.5 million in investments? Was the board aware of this at a time when Scott Neeson was claiming that CCF owned no land; at a time when he owned land himself, contrary to Cambodian law.

(3) In the CCF returns for 2014 'Travel' accounted for about $240k. This suggests an average spend of $20,000 each month for an organisation with its major operational focus in one part of one city in Cambodia.  Did the board ever ask Scott Neeson to account for this $20,000 per month travel bill? (Does the board ever ask Scott Neeson to account for any of his spending?)

(3) In CCF’s flagship location in central Phnom Penh, CCF1, resident students, almost all of whom are over 18 years old were, until very recently, sharing beds – 4 bunk beds between 10 students. Did the board approve of this bunk-sharing arrangement?

(4) Is it a matter of concern to the board that CCF residents have no dining room to eat in? That the room once used as a dining room was taken over for administrative use, making it necessary for residents to eat wherever they can find a space to sit.

 (5) Do you believe it is necessary for CCF residents to be monitored 24 hours a day by up to 8 internal CCTV cameras?

(6) Is it a matter of any concern that CCF is dominated by the family of the Country Manager whose sisters, brother, father, husband and brother-in-law have held or are holding key positions in the organization; that these positions are very favorably remunerated.

 (7) Why does CCF keep siblings from the same family in different residential establishments? Do you approve of this splitting up of siblings in this way?

To refresh your memory, my letter to you of June 2014

# 11 Some questions that Heather Graham should ask Scott Neeson

http://cambodianchildrensfund.blogspot.com/2014/06/some-questions-that-heather-graham.html

Heather Graham

c/o PMK/HBH Public Relations

700 San Vincente Avenue

Suite G-910

West Hollywood, CA 90069

13^th June 2014

Dear Heather

re Scott Neeson and the Cambodian Children’s Fund

I am writing this to you via your Public Relations representative in Hollywood. You understand the importance of public relations in representing yourself to the world in the way that is going to serve your acting career best.

Non Government Organizations such as the Cambodian Children’s Fund also employ Public Relations specialists to present themselves to potential donors and sponsors in the light that is going to serve their interests best – namely to raise as much money as possible. Celebrities such as yourself can be very useful in achieving this goal. Celebrities can also become pawns in a game the rules of which they do not know or understand if they are kept in the dark and force fed a public relations myth such as the one perpetrated this past 15 or so years by Somaly Mam.

The recent exposure of Somaly Mam as a liar reveals that public relations can only do so much to protect charismatic frauds such as Somaly Mam from public scrutiny. Eventually the truth emerges.  I imagine that there are rich, famous Hollywood stars and producers who, in June 2014, wish they had asked more questions of Somaly before jumping on the Somaly Mam Foundation bandwagon. If they had bothered to do so (or even do a little google research) they would have discovered what the NGO community in Cambodia has known for many years, namely that Somaly has always played fast and loose with the truth in the belief that the good work she was doing justified her lies and deceit – the end justifying the means.

Somaly is not alone in playing fast and loose with the truth, in creating the past for herself that best services the Somaly Mam myth; a myth that has shielded her for many years from criticism: “How could you be critical of Somaly Mam?” this line of thinking goes. “How could you question her integrity? She is doing such good work to help women who have been trafficked.” The resultant lack of scrutiny, even from Pulitzer Prize winning journalists such as Nicholas Kristoff, has enabled Somaly to exploit the very women she was supposed to be helping in order to provide herself with a fabulous red-carpet celebrity-filled jet-setters lifestyle.

You have jumped on the Scott Neeson Cambodian Children’s Fund bandwagon but I wonder, Heather, if you have asked enough questions (some of them tough ones) in order to find out what actually goes on at CCF? Of course, when you make a quick trip to Cambodia, you will be shown what Scott wants you to see, you will hear what Scott wants you to hear and you will be used (in a public relations sense) to get Scott’s message out to the world. The message is, in brief: “There are so many children in need, so many children without homes, so many children that need and deserve a decent education that CCF needs all the money it can raise.”  

Yes, there are many children with these needs. These children for the most part, have parents. They have mums and dad’s who love them; mums and dads who want to best for their children; mums and dad’s who cannot afford to feed their sons and daughters properly, to educate them; mums and dads who would welcome any assistance provided to the entire family – assistance that would keep the family together and not see their sons and daughters brought up by strangers in an institution and presented to donors and sponsors, to all intents and purposes, as ‘orphans’ rescued by the wonderful Scott Neeson who gave up his highly successful Hollywood career etc.

During your brief visits to Cambodia you will not meet or talk with the parents of children who were removed from their families under false pretenses and not returned when the parents asked Scott to return them. Yes, you will be taken to visit some families who have been (are being) helped by CCF but what about all the families still living in the most appalling of circumstances, working in the dump, whilst one member of the family is living in an what amounts to a CCF orphanage?

I  recently filmed with one such family – all but one member of which works in the Phnom Penh dump. The combined family income is between $10 and $20 a week. The one member of the family not working in the dump is living in a CCF ‘orphanage’, eating three meals a day and receiving an education their parents could not afford to provide them with. Have you ever asked Scott how much it costs to keep one child in a CCF dormitory? Have you ever asked him if this amount of money, if given directly to the family, would not only enable the family to stay together but make it unnecessary for the mother and father to work in the dump?

Scott will probably tell you that many of the kids he ‘adopts’ come from abusive families. Do they? How many? And even if they do, do you think that there might be some relationship between such abuse and the extreme poverty experienced by the family? Removing children from families, even when parents are abusive, alcoholic, drug addicted, should be the last resort; not the first one.

Leaving aside the human rights abuses inherent in breaking up families, do the sums add up? Are you aware that it costs around 5 times as much to keep a child in an institution as it does to support that child within his or her family? If not, Heather, please do your homework before next lending your name to the perpetuation of the Scott Neeson myth.

If you feel inclined to ask some questions, Heather, you might also ask Scott how many kids sleep in CCF dormitories. Take with a huge grain of salt what Scott tells you; what you read online. Remember, there are PR specialists putting a lot of time and effort into perpetuating the Scott Neeson mythology and presenting CCF as beyond criticism - an NGO so pure that to even ask Scott questions would be insulting to a man who gave up his successful Hollywood career to rescue….etc.

Have you ever asked Scott what has become of the many ‘graduates’ of CCF? How many of them have benefited from being removed from their families and institutionalized? How many have not? Without answers to such questions it is impossible for you, or for anyone else, to know whether CCF is doing more good than harm or the reverse.

I do not expect that you should blindly believe anything I write here, Heather. I would suggest, however, that you ask as many questions as you can of Scott and be satisfied with the answers before continuing to act as a Hollywood spokesperson for Scott Neeson and CCF. Look beyond the spin and be as cautious as you can be in accepting what Scott tells you as Gospel truth; as cautious as you should be in accepting anything I write her as Gospel.

If you have half an hour to spare you could read my Cambodian Children’s Fund blog and find our for yourself just how Scott treated one member of the media who began to ask questions that he did not want to answer:

http://cambodianchildrensfund.blogspot.com.au/

You will discover, if you read it, that Scott is a liar. If he lies to me, can you be sure that he is not lying to you? If you ask around a little you will discover that Scott does not like to talk with anyone in the media who is going to ask him questions that he does not want to answer; any journalist who might puncture the bubble of the Scot Neeson myth. This is why he employs his brother to make hagiographic films about him and to conduct ‘interviews’ that are really just self-promotion on Scott’s part.

Do bear in mind, Heather, the ultimate fate of Somaly Mam, publicly humiliated when the truth about her came out. And bear in mind also the amount of egg on the faces of all those celebrities who bought Somaly’s story hook, line and sinker.

best wishes

James Ricketson