# 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

# 87 LICADHO'S report on the Cambodian judiciary and prisons system. Some questions!

Dr Kek Pung

President

LICADHO

22nd Jan 2015

Dear Dr Pung

Yesterday the Cambodia Daily reported on yet another report released by LICADHO.

“Inmates at prisons across Cambodia continue to face systematic abuse, squalid conditions and corruption, according to a report released by rights group Licadho on Tuesday.

The report, “Rights at a Price: Life Inside Cambodia’s Prisons,” is based on interviews with prisoners, former inmates, their relatives and staff at 18 penal facilities over the past year. It calls the country’s court and prison systems “corrupt political structures driven by nepotism” that together result in the brutal treatment of inmates.

Of what value is such a report? Who does LICADHO expect to read the report? Relevant members of the Cambodian government?

Why write a report about nameless generic prisoners that merely affirms what everyone knows about the Cambodian judiciary and prison system? Do such reports have any impact in the real world in which Cambodians live or do they merely collect dust along with hundreds (thousands?) of other LICADHO reports; unread by anyone with either the power or the desire to challenge the status quo?

After 20 years of travelling to Cambodia, having seen tens of thousands of materially poor Cambodians robbed on their homes and their land, having seen the country’s natural resources raped by a rapacious kelptocracy, having seen the proliferation of $100,000 four wheel drives driven by men on salaries of less than $1000 a month, (the list goes on!) I have to ask myself:

“Has LICADHO achieved anything at all that has actually helped the Cambodian people with all its reports this past 20 years?”

If LICADHO is serious about wanting to improve the Cambodian judiciary and prison system, why not put a human face to the prisoners you write about? Why not  take particular cases and highlight the abuse of legal process inherent in how certain men came to find themselves in jail for long periods of time having had no opportunity to present a defense in court?

By chance, not design, I stumbled upon the case of David Fletcher. I could just as easily have stumbled upon the case of Matt Harland who, like David Fletcher, has been denied a trial conducted in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure. What is most interesting about the David Fletcher case is that Yang Dany’s intact hymen after two “brutal rapes”, her admission that no rapes took place, her admission that she and her mother were offered $30,000 to pay charges, is very strongly suggestive of Mr Fletcher’s innocence. In any country in the world in which the rule of law applied, judges would have thrown this case out years ago. In Cambodia, however, evidence of innocence and the lack of evidence of guilt mean nothing when rich and powerful men, women and organizations can buy the court result that suits their purposes.

In November last year I asked you, Dr Pung, I asked LICADHO, to please send someone from LICADHO to observe what was supposed to be David Fletcher’s ‘re-trial’. You refused to do so. You did not bother to even acknowledge receipt of my letters.

If a representatives of LICADHO had attended s/he would have heard the APLE lawyer in court specifically request of the judges that they not allow Mr Fletcher’s trial to proceed. And what was the reason given by APLE for requesting that no trial be held? As Samleang Seila made quite clear, when asked by the Cambodia Daily for “a more detailed explanation of the disputed testimony that led to Mr. Fletcher’s conviction, Mr. Seila said the time had passed for such questions.

“It is too late for that. This hearing is a matter of law, not a matter of facts. He missed the deadline.”

What kind of NGO, in theory committed to the protection of human rights, advocates that the human and legal rights of a defendant be abrogated because paper-work did not arrive at the court in time? Especially when the reason why the paperwork did not arrive in time had nothing to do with the defendant!? Why does LICADHO consort with a man such as Samleang Seila who clearly has very limited notions of what the expression ‘human rights’ refers to?

If a representative  of LICADHO had been in court S/he would have seen the judges hand back to Mr Fletcher the evidence he wished to present. They would have heard the judges refuse to allow Mr Fletcher to speak in his own defense. And they would have noted that after the judges adjourned the court for 15 minutes they returned to read a long statement that had so obviously been written before the day’s court proceedings began. The LICADHO observer would have noted that the judges made no reference at all, in their long-winded statement, to the promise of three weeks earlier that Mr Fletcher was to be granted a retrial. And s/he would have noted also that no record of the court proceedings was made.

The court proceedings of that morning, lacking in even the pretense of due process, came on top of APLE having arranged for the key witness (Yang Dany) to leave Cambodia so that she would not be available for cross-examination or to speak with the media. Both Yang Dany and her mother, Kheang Sekun, had resolved to tell the truth in court, despite the risk of their being charged with perjury. Their appearance in a proper court of law would have caused Seila huge embarrassment. Hence to need to send Yang Dany to China. And now, lest Kheang Sekun tell the truth, APLE has moved her into a new house and instructed her not to sp4ak with any member of the media. Such is Samleang Seila’s commitment to the rule of law and the protection of human rights.

In the absence of any answers from LICADHO it is very difficult to not speculate as to why LICADHO did not want to have a representative in court to report on the clear evidence of APLE’s attempt (successful) to subvert the course of justice. APLE is a partner of LICADHO and you cannot be seen to be critical of your partner. APLE is also an NGO that your daughter Naly Pilorge helped to set up; an NGO that she now attempts to disassociate herself from (in public at least) because of the obvious conflict of interest inherent in her relationship, as Director of LICADHO, with an NGO that has revealed, through its actions, to have scant regard for the human and legal rights of either men accused of sex crimes or of the children who are coerced into giving evidence against them. Another quote from yesterday’s Cambodia Daily:

“Kuy Bunsorn, the prison department’s director-general, said Tuesday that the report’s findings were “exaggerated” in order to elicit funding from donors.

‘This organization’s (LICADHO’S) report is the same every year in terms of the accusations of torture, corruption and bad conditions in prisons. It does this to satisfy the donors to get money,’ he said.”

Whilst what Kuy Bunsorn says here needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt it does seem that LICADHO’S incessant report-writing has more to do with securing funding than with actually doing anything to help, in a concrete way, those who suffer rom human and legal rights abuses – be they Khmer or non-Khmer.

Apropos previous letters to you (all of which you ignore) I reiterate my offer to:

(1) Introduce LICADHO to a person whose account of APLE’S modus operandi needs to be made public, if s/he can be provided with protection from those who would wish him/her harm.

(2) Provide copies of all the court documents relating to David Fletcher – in not one of which is there evidence of his guilt of rape that would stand up in a trial that took place in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure. These documents could be couriered to you from Australia if you and LICADHO’S lawyers are interested in looking at them.

Finally, on a positive note, it seems to me that the most significant contribution LICADHO could make to resolving the problems that have been outlined on my blog (and elsewhere) is to play a proactive role in formulating procedures and protocols in relation to the videotaping of the testimony of children involved in cases of alleged sexual abuse. I have written about this on my blog entry #85:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/85-canadian-national-pierre-deslauriers.html

I can recommend the content of blog entry #86 as a starting point for a discussion that LICADHO could well set in motion if there is a will, a desire, on your part, on LICADHO’S part, to safeguard the human and legal rights both of children and those accused of sex crimes against them:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/86-interviewing-methods-in-suspected.html

best wishes

James Ricketson