Jun 11 2009
by Steffan Rhys
The economic downturn is forcing more and more children across the globe into prostitution, while depriving charities of the funding they need to help. Steffan Rhys meets one Welsh woman helping the fightback in a corner of Cambodia described as ‘Hell on Earth’
POI PET is a stiflingly hot, dusty town on the Thai-Cambodian border. Its name means nothing to most of the world, but in the past decade it has become a crawling, seedy hub of the child sexual exploitation industry, now the planet’s second most lucrative organised crime.
Described by those working in its midst as a “hotbed of social ills at all imaginable levels”, it is a place where Thais, Cambodians and Westerners come to rape children as young as four.
In its midst is a refuge centre for these children run by the charity Goutte d’Eau. It is, according to Bethan Cairns Bevan, “a paradise in the centre of Hell on Earth”.
The Swiss charity was specifically established to help vulnerable children in Cambodia and, for the past three years, Mrs Bevan has been supporting them through her own charity, First Hand. It is desperately needed.
According to the UN, 1.2 million children are trafficked annually – others put this figure as high as four million – with 30,000 children in Cambodia involved in its sex trade.
UN statistics indicate that 30% of the women and children trafficked worldwide each year are of Asian origin.
According to the US state department, human trafficking has overtaken drug trafficking in terms of its lucrativeness and generates $9.5bn a year.
As the economic crisis deepens, many in Cambodia are turning to prostitution to make ends meet, but most of this is not voluntary, with forced prostitution and trafficking on the increase and many young victims sold for as little as $10.
And contrary to popular belief – fuelled by high-profile arrests like that of Gary Glitter and investigations into Western paedophiles – the main clients are Cambodian.
Many Cambodians are said to consider it acceptable and many believe HIV can be prevented or cured through sex with a virgin.
“The sex trade is rife in Poi Pet. The situation for children is horrendous,” said Mrs Bevan. “I heard last week of a four-year-old girl rescued from a brothel there.
“There is one main road passing through with slums either side. Children sleep behind the enormous casinos, built within spitting distance of the Thai border, where gambling is illegal [but popular].
“In the day, young girls may be carrying umbrellas to shelter tourists from the sun, in the night they are working as prostitutes.
“In the middle of all this filth is the centre, which takes children on initially for two weeks. If they can last the two weeks [they often leave because of drug dependence and intimidation], they get a chance to be rehabilitated.
“They also bring children back from Thailand [where they have been sold into the sex trade] to Cambodia.”
Mrs Bevan, whose brother is Conservative AM Alun Cairns, founded First Hand in Singapore, where she lives with her two children and husband, Huw, head of production for global television sports network ESPN.
In Singapore, her part-time job is running a mother and toddler group from a church.
But voluntarily and with a committee of seven, the charity raises funds in Singapore through schools and businesses to help children in Cambodia.
They supply clothes, medicine, books and even wheelchairs to children who are already in contact with Goutte D’Eau, as well as the charities Riverkids in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, which rescues young children from prostitution, and the Sisters of Charity.
First Hand are also helping to fund the rebuilding of Goutte D’Eau’s Phnom Penh centre – one of its three centres – burnt down after an electrical fault in the roof. The landlord denied any liability.
Mrs Bevan, 40, a mother-of-two who is originally from Clydach, launched the charity with best friend Cathy Clarke, from Tipperary, after being invited to join a group of teachers from Singapore on a trip to Cambodia to help build houses. She now returns four times a year. “We take very little of our own luggage, but instead load up laundry bags full of stuff to take the centres,” she said.
“Recently, we took out an electric wheelchair for a boy with muscular dystrophy, who used to be carried everywhere by his brother. His wheelchair burnt in the fire. We raised $27,000 in a week to help rebuild the centre and get him a new wheelchair.”
There are several large NGOs (non-governmental organisations) of international renown working in Cambodia, but there are still thousands of children falling through the net.
They are not all victims of sexual exploitation. Many are beggars, often forcibly linked to organised crime syndicates.
Particularly vulnerable are disabled children. Many are suffering with disabilities caused by self- abortion attempts made by mothers unable to support a child.
There are almost no long-term shelters for disabled children in Cambodia.
“There are loads of NGOs in Cambodia, but people are still missed,” said Mrs Bevan.
“We are a small grassroots organisation helping those that fall between the cracks.
“After the first visit, we realised there are some organisations getting tons more help than others.
“The handicapped are at the bottom of the pile, but they need help.
“One of the organisations helping them was Goutte D’Eau.”
Riverkids, meanwhile, works to prevent child trafficking by working directly with families at high risk of trafficking.
Run by Dale Edmonds in Phnom Penh, it provides shelter for children sold as debt slaves, domestic drudges, illegal adoptions, cheap labour and child prostitutes.
“Trafficking is increasingly a ‘rental’ business, so the pimps and buyers can cut costs and avoid extra legal charges,” wrote Mr Edmonds in a recent blog.
“Plus, it gets the whole family dependent on the regular income a sold child brings in.”
Indeed, many of the children at Goutte d’Eau’s residential centre in Phnom Penh can only attend on condition that they are allowed to return home at night.
They receive a basic education and a meal then go back to work on the streets, a compromise with parents who need their incomes and otherwise would not let them attend.
“The lucky ones have got somewhere to lie down, maybe with a roof over their heads,” said Mrs Bevan.
“One of the ways they get money is collecting empty plastic bottles. They get 20 American cents for 2kg.
“Begging and drug abuse mean these children do not get a chance to go to school. And with families earning a dollar a day to keep perhaps 10 children, a school uniform is the last thing on their minds, so we take out second- hand uniforms which match the ones in the local schools.”
Parents are also complicit, though often unwittingly, in the sale of their children to crime gangs. “Very often the children are sold to pimps by parents who mostly do not realise they are selling them into prostitution or begging,” said Mrs Bevan.
“Parents care for their children. They have sold them thinking they are headed for a better life, perhaps in a kitchen in Bangkok.”
But as tourism has soared in Cambodia, the increased wealth is not reaching the poor. “The rich have got richer and the slums are just moved around,” said Mrs Bevan.
“The one thing I would tell tourists is not to give begging children money because they are usually run by syndicates.
“If we can stop begging, the syndicates get no money, the parents get no money and these children have to go to school.”
Among the children whose lives have substantially more hope thanks to the work of these lesser- known charities is a seven- year-old Cambodian rescued from the streets of Bangkok.
“When they rescued her, her eye was bulging and infected, it had never been treated and she lost it,” said Mrs Bevan.
“But the worse she looked the more money she got from begging. Her parents have never been traced, she doesn’t remember where she came from.
“One boy rescued [by the Sisters of Charity] was thrown into water and left to drown. But for whatever reason, he didn’t – they called him Moses.”
But despite having gone through such barely-imaginable horror, these children still have warmth to give.
So while the clothes and books brought by First Hand are gladly received, the mutual human affection is wholeheartedly welcomed.
“Despite what they’ve been through, the children have kept faith in people,” said Mrs Bevan.
“What they like about us is that we are people who are showing interest in them.
“When we renovated the centre last year, a little boy made a speech and thanked us so much for all we had done for them.
“He told us they would not let us down and would work hard. And I believed him.
“The children are so intelligent. If they got the kind of chances our children get they would fly on in life. One boy can even mimic me when I speak in Welsh.”
But the recession means Goutte d’Eau is having to fight harder for dwindling funding.
“They may have to shut down their vocational arm – where they run vocational training for older children ranging from car mechanics to hairdressing – in order to keep their residential centres open,” said Mrs Bevan.
“We [First Hand] try to help them as much as possible and they really need help.
“But how often we visit depends on our fundraising. We’re tapping the same people all the time and Singapore is a small place. What we need is cold, hard cash which will help us buy the necessary wheelchairs, help us rebuild the centre.”
And poignantly, it’s not just the essentials that the charity hopes to fund, but the extras that help brighten children’s lives – extras that children elsewhere take for granted.
She added: “One thing we’ve been asked for this year is a Christmas tree.”
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