# 134 Is Scott Neeson the knight in shining armour he presents himself to the world to be?

“You are a voyeur who has the luxury to romanticize a situation that you know nothing about.”

So wrote Scott Neeson, Executive Director of the Cambodian Children’s Fund.to me in Sept 2011.  

Scott’s ‘voyeur’ observation was in relation to documentary filming I had done over the previous few years with a family that worked and lived in the Phnom Penh rubbish dump.

The family's dad, Chuan, and mum, Ka

“Your view that this family had a richer life than you and your community in Sydney is the paternalistic nonsense of someone who gets to fly in, film their hardship, then fly back to the luxuries of home, to pass judgment on those of us who remain here… Having Sokheng (Sokayn) remain on the garbage dump with her family may have fulfilled your vision of a life-lesson on the human condition.”

I had neither written nor implied what Scott suggests here but Scott was not going to allow the facts, the truth, to deflect him from his expression of self-righteous indignation.

“Sokheng and her family loathed living on the garbage dump – the squalor, ill health, degradation and other conditions you are blissfully unaware of – and wanted nothing more than to transcend that existence.”

Sokheng, whose name I have always spelt phonetically as Sokayn, was 7 years old when I began to film with her family.

After 16 years of experience in Cambodia at the time (now 20 years) I was not "blissfully unaware" but otherwise on this point Scott and I are in complete agreement.

Sokayn's family dwelling (background) rested on top of a 30 foot pile of decayed and decaying rubbish in the old Phnom Penh rubbish dump.

It is Scott’s next sentence that is problematic, to say the least!

“CCF gave the children a Western-quality education and provided the parents with a new life back in their homeland. We provided real, tangible help to them.”

Scott was lying, as he has a tendency to do. At the time he wrote these words in an email to me, the mother and father of the family, Ka and Chuan, were still working in the rubbish dump. The family was not living a new life back in their homeland thanks to the Cambodian Children’s Fund. 

Ka and Chuan were living in a squalid windowless box close to the new Phnom Penh dump that does qualify for the word ‘home’.  Between them they were earning $1,000 a year scavenging in the dump.

Ka and her husband Chuan at work.

 In its 2013 tax return the Cambodian Children's Fund informed the IRS  in its tax return that it cost (and CCF was presumably spending) $2,000 a year to educate Sokayn and a further $2,000 a year to provide her with dormitory accommodation in a CCF residential facility.

So, whilst CCF, according to its own figures, was 'spending' $4,000 a year to take care of Sokayn, her mum and dad were earning $1,000 a year.

Sokayn at work in the dump

It gets worse. 

Sokayn had an older sister, Sokourn, who was also residing in a CCF institution. Another $4,000.

According to CCF it was spending $8,000 a year to take care of Sokayn and Sokourn. Unless CCF was lying to the IRS, I think it fair to presume that CCF was raising, through sponsors and donors, $8,000 a year to take care of Sokayn and Sokourn.

Sokourn (older sister) and Sokayn at home - 10 square feet of open space with a roof made of plastic sheeting

When Chuan and Ka asked me to help get their daughters back, Scott Neeson insisted that they had signed a contract handing control of the girls to CCF. Chuan and Ka maintained that they had never signed a contract with CCF. When asked, Scott refused to provide a copy of the contract. He subsequently informed me that CCF had entered into a contract with MOSAVY. Maybe he had but what right did MOSAVY have to be entering into a contract with CCF regarding the custody of Sokayn and Sokourn?

The answer is: "No legal right". However, as I discovered in another case (Citipointe Church's illegal removal of two other daughters of a poor family), MOSAVY's decision as to who can and cannot retain custody of children removed from their families is not determined in accordance with Cambodian law. If you are a rich and powerful NGO, with an Executive Director well connected politically, you can retain custody of whatever children you choose to, regardless of the parent's wishes, and be held accountable by no-one - including human rights organisations  such as LICADHO or the English language media.

Scott Neeson eventually gave Ka a job at the Cambodian Children's Fund. This enabled her and her husband, Chuan, to stop working in the dump. Ka's job was, however, contingent on her signing a non-disclosure contract forbidding her from speaking with me or anyone else in the media about the illegal detention of her daughters by CCF.

When Sokayn turned 14 she was give a job teaching at the Cambodian Children's Fund.

The family is now totally dependent on CCF.

My filmic record is the only evidence that is likely to see the light of day regarding CCF's illegal detention of Sokayn and Sokourn.

The family's work environment. Smoke from burning rubbish, including rubber, fills the air all day. Respiratory illnesses are common amongst the 700 or so men, women and children who work in the dump in August 2015

Sokayn collects plastic bags in the dump for recycling

Sokourn returning home from CCF school. Shoes were, at the time, a luxury that her family could not afford and were not supplied by CCF.

Ka, 8 months pregnant at the time the photo was taken, worked 10 hour days in the dump, 6 days a week, earning around $40 a month

The plastic bags that Sokayn collects are usually filled with putrid smelling organic rubbish

Sokayn and her mum, Ka, on the way home after a day's work that has earned the family around $3

The family diet at the time of my filming was basically rice. Even after Sokayn and Sokourn went to stay with CCF, the rest of the family's diet remained rice.

Despite extreme poverty, this was a close, loving and happy family at the time of my filming. In Scott Neeson's view, an observation of the kind renders me guilty of having a romantic view of poverty. The reality is that being poor is not a bar to being happy - anymore than being rich is a guarantee of happiness.

The family kitchen

Sokayn, always smiling, challenges the widely held view that poor people must, by definition, be 'miserable'. This is not an argument in favour of keeping the poor poor, despite Scott Neeson's conviction that it is!

In August 2015 there are still 100 children working in the rubbish dump.

# 133 Thirteen year old girl works in rubbish dump in the morning and attends CCF school in the afternoon!

Dear Scott

This morning I met a shy 13 year old girl who works in the Phnom Penh rubbish dump in the mornings and goes to school at CCF in the afternoon. Her father died five years ago. Her mother has five children to rear. She is the oldest.

I conducted a videotaped interview with her.

This girl told me the Cambodian Children’s Fund gives the family 5 kilos of rice each month. That’s less than $10 worth of rice per month or roughly $120 worth of rice each year.

In the IRS tax return of 2013 CCF claimed to be spending $2,000 per year per child on education. Does this mean that there is an entry in CCF’s books, with this girl’s name alongside it, and the sum of $2,000?

To put this another way, have sponsors and donors given CCF $2,000 towards the education of this girl?

I doubt very much that you will answer this question but if you do, please do the sums for me, and for others interested.

It seems to me (though I have never been much good at maths), if CCF has $2,000 to spend on this girl’s education, that $120 per annum is going to the family and $1,880 is going to CCF. The family’s entire income for the year is around $1,000.

If my maths here is wrong, please enlighten me with the correct maths.

No doubt the usual Neeson Trolls will attack me for the usual reasons but really, Scott, it is time for you to answer some questions.

This little girl, young woman, also told me that of the 700 people working in the Phnom Penh rubbish dump, 100 of them are children.

Why, given the millions of dollars you have at your disposal, are there any children at all working in the rubbish dump? And how can you, with a clear conscience, Scott, allow a 13 year old to be both working in the dump and attending a CCF school whilst you provide each member of this family with only 10 kilos of rice per year?

I showed a photograph of you to members of the community. Not one of them has ever seen you and has no idea who you are. Given that many of these people have lived in the same place for years now it would seem, as with much else of what you claim about yourself, that it is not true that you are a regular visitor to the communities you claim to be helping.

I have not mentioned this girl’s name because I know the pressure she and her family would be placed under to recant what she told me. Alternatively, you could shower the family with money and maybe even give the girl (and her mother) jobs with CCF and buy their silence that way.

I look forward to your response, Scott, though I think I would have to sit down in a state of shock of you were to provide one. Instead, you will relegate the name-calling and shooting of the messenger to your Trolls.

cheers

James

# 132 'World Housing' & Scott Neeson's CCF housing scam

Dear Graham Brewster

and all those who,

on the World Housing website,

sing the praises of World Housing

One of my questions, to by found in my ‘open letter’ of 7^th August has been answered.

World Housing HAS been aware, for quite some time, that the homes ‘gifted’ to  impoverished Cambodian families have, in fact, been gifted to Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children’s Fund.

Scott Neeson has NOT then ‘gifted’ these homes to those for whom the homes were intended.   He has kept them for himself, for CCF, to be rented to impoverished families!

World Housing and the Cambodian Children’s Fund have conspired, using deliberately misleading language on your respective websites, to create the illusion that impoverished families are the beneficiaries of free housing. This is, as you know Graham, and as you have known for a long time, is not so. You have deliberately mislead developers –the builders of condominiums – into believing that they were providing homes to impoverished families that they could call their own. Instead, you have provided Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children’s Fund with $840,000 of free housing.

You, and your World Housing compatriots,  have exploited the poverty of desperately poor families in Phnom Penh for your own personal gain. In the case of Scott Neeson the gain has been financial: 300+ free houses at $2,800 per house.

In addition to this, Scott’s reputation has been enhanced by his being able to present CCF as partnering with World Housing to provide impoverished Cambodian families with a home they can call their own. A lie, but then Scott is a marketing man for whom facts and truth are irrelevant when there is a product to be sold!

In the case of World Housing, all of those to whom I wrote my ‘open letter’, have benefited financially from the $50,000 paid per developer for the privilege of ‘gifting’ homes to impoverished Cambodian families. How many developers are there under the World Housing umbrella?

Peter Dupuis and Sid Landolt have been the primary financial beneficiaries, however. They get their commission on each and every condominium sold through World Housing. Not one dollar of their own money goes to help impoverished families in Cambodia.

In addition, Peter and Sid’s reputations in Vancouver are enhanced as two  humanitarian men using their business acumen to help impoverished families in Cambodia. Words cannot express my contempt for the kind of cynical exploitation of 3^rd world poverty that Peter and Sid have knowingly engaged in.

This is not to let you off the hook, Graham. You have gone along with this web of deceit; knowing all along that it was a marketing scam.

The question now is whether or not the World Housing board, and others touting World Housing, have also been knowingly involved in this scam to provide Scott Neeson with free housing?

The most pressing question now, however, (for me at least), is to find out whether developers who opened their hearts and their wallets to provide free housing to impoverished families in Cambodia are aware that they have provided free housing to Scott Neeson?

The mind boggles at the sheer audacity and scale of this scam.

World Housing seems, on paper, to be a terrific idea. I will give World Housing the benefit of the doubt for the next 48 hours, operating on the presumption that the bulk of those to whom I wrote my ‘open letter’ were unaware of this scam. If I do not receive from World Housing what I consider to be an adequate response to the questions I have asked I will be left with no alternative but to report World Housing to the relevant Canadian authorities and to warn Vancouver developers to be very careful in believing that what World Housing tells them about their partnership with Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children’s Fund is true.

The ball is in your court, Graham. This is not a time to call in the spin doctors but to sever your relationship with Scott Neeson and to see to it that the homes ‘gifted’ to impoverished Cambodian families wind up in their hands and not Scott Neeson’s.

I am copying this to some representatives of the 4^th Estate who will, I trust, take an interest in how you respond to my ‘open letter’ and to this addendum to it; and who may be induced to ask a few pertinent questions of their own.

best wishes

James Ricketson