by Tara Winkler
‘Can you take Sovanni to live at your onga?’ the old lady asked. ‘She’s a good baby. Doesn’t cause any trouble. It would help me and be good for Sovanni, too.’
Savenh and Jedtha and I exchanged a look. We had the facilities and the infrastructure in place to help at-risk children—it was the reason CCT existed. How could we say no and leave the baby in this awful situation? So we contacted DoSVY to arrange the paperwork.
I just wish we knew then what we know now about how to deal properly with these sorts of situations. Perhaps we could have found Sovanni’s mother and helped the whole family to stay together.
A few days later, we took Sovanni’s grandma to the doctor to see if there was anything more we could do for her. But the old woman’s health was much worse than we originally thought. She died a few months later.
We all took turns looking after Sovanni, but having a baby at CCT was a challenge. A lot of Sovanni’s care fell to me—everyone else was so busy. So for the next six months she was with me almost all the time. As her grandma had said, she really was an easy baby to look after. She almost never cried and was fiercely independent. I often admired her stoicism, despite her rocky start. Perhaps, I thought, it was a case of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. (I would find out later how wrong I was about that.) Still, looking after Sovanni was a lot of work. I developed a whole new respect for single parents!
Sineit was amazingly good with Sovanni and was a huge help to me. Sovanni absolutely adored her and beamed whenever she was in Sineit’s arms.
Under our care, Sovanni grew plump and glossy and gorgeous. But she always remained fiercely independent. She was by far the smallest but had no problem shoving the other kids out of the way to get what she wanted.
I developed a special bond with Sovanni, but I worried a lot about what long-term effect having me—the young foreigner—as her main caregiver would have on the little girl.
I worried about the other kids, too. They were getting very dependent on me and the little ones were starting to call me ‘Mum’. It’s not uncommon in Cambodia for female caregivers to be given this name, but I was shocked the first time it happened. ‘My name is Tara,’ I told them. It wasn’t a sentiment I wanted to encourage.
On the day we met Akara at LICADHO, the lawyer advised us to file an official report about Rath’s attacks on Sinet with the Battambang police.
So Sinet, Jedtha and I went to the station and two policemen went through the motions of recording a detailed statement, which ended up being several pages long. Sinet had to spell out every last detail of each time Rath had raped her, which was awful—especially when everything she said was received with a sort of blank nonchalance by the policemen.
‘Why didn’t you report this when it happened?’ one policeman asked, picking a bit of his lunch from his teeth.
‘I was scared,’ Sinet squeaked.
The policeman grunted. ‘Well, that wasn’t very smart, was it?’
I looked over at Jedtha in shock. What a fucking arsehole! I wanted to say. Jedtha just shook his head and gestured for me to stay quiet.
On the way home, Sinet’s hands flew to her face. ‘Oh! We just passed Rath’s sister!’ she cried, her voice shaking.
I patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t let anyone hurt you. The police have your report now and we’ll get a good lawyer. Rath will be in jail soon.’ I hoped with all my heart that this was true.
Our next step was for Jedtha, Sinet and me to drive out to meet with a well-respected lawyer, recommended to us by the assistant governor. His office was an ostentatious display of Khmer wealth, featuring beautifully carved and extremely uncomfortable wooden furniture.
Again, Sinet painstakingly went through the details of each incident. After asking lots of questions and taking copious notes, he told us that he thought we had a strong case. He seemed like a well-educated guy who knew what he was talking about. He was so confident that we could get a successful outcome, he declared, that he’d take on the case for a small upfront payment, and only charge for the rest if we won.
Very kindly, he told Sinet: ‘Don’t worry. We should be able to put him in jail for a long time for what he did to you.’
It was all extremely encouraging. We left feeling full of confidence that justice would soon be done and Rath would be locked away.
Not long after we met the lawyer, Jedtha and I attended the trial of Akara’s cousin, who had raped the little girl in the forest so brutally.
The case was heard at Battambang’s courthouse, an imposing building with a soaring ceiling and huge twin statues guarding the massive front door. If ever a building was designed to make you feel small, this was it.
An armed guard led Akara’s cousin and one other man into the courtroom. They were chained together and dressed in blue prison jumpsuits. The guards made the prisoners sit on a wooden bench in the centre of the room, facing the judge.
Akara’s cousin was tall and strong, and looked to me like he was about my age. It was clear that something wasn’t right with him. He had his hand in his pants and was playing with himself while he waited for proceedings to start.
The other man was on trial for murder, and we had to sit through his case before we got to Akara’s. The man had had an argument with a neighbour one night, which resulted in him sinking an axe into the back of the neighbour’s skull.
I was horrified that Akara had to sit there and listen to the gory details. Characteristically, she coped by detaching, staring off into the middle distance.
After that case was finished, Akara’s aunt was called to speak. Her voice was shaking as she gave her evidence to the judge. I was so moved and impressed by her bravery.
Then the judge called Akara up. I’ll never forget how incredibly scared and tiny and vulnerable Akara looked up on the wooden stand. I hated that she had to do this right in front of her cousin and other members of her abusive family.
She was too intimidated to speak, so the judge asked me to get up and stand next to her. I held her hand and she managed to gasp out a couple of monosyllabic answers.
After another hour or so of proceedings, which I couldn’t entirely follow, the court was dismissed and the men were led out of the court.
‘So? What happened?’ I asked Jedtha.
‘He was found guilty,’ said Jedtha. ‘The judge said the reports from the doctor who examined Akara were very helpful.’
Jedtha explained the sentencing would happen later—he was expecting the cousin to be sentenced to fifteen years in jail. But when we got the report from the court, we found out he had only got eight! Apparently Akara’s family had produced a birth certificate to show that the cousin was seventeen years and ten months old, so he was tried as a child.
Jedtha said: ‘They probably paid for a fake one.’
I was outraged. Eight years for rape and attempted murder of sweet little Akara just felt like a joke to me.
‘I can’t believe that piece of shit got away with just eight years!’ I lamented down the phone to Carolyn that afternoon. ‘He should have his bloody dick chopped off for what he did to her!’
Carolyn agreed, but managed to calm me down by reminding me that eight years would be an awfully long time in a Cambodian prison . . . I couldn’t deny that was true—I imagine that a prison in a developing country would be like hell on earth. But I’m not sure anything would have felt like justice for what Akara had been through.
Sinet’s lawyer got in touch from time to time with updates on the case against Rath. The police had interviewed him, and of course Rath had denied everything. So now we were waiting for the case to be handed over to the court. It was certainly taking a long time . . .
Corruption is such a fact of life in South-East Asia that it becomes unremarkable. Even the travel guides for foreigners describe ways to bribe your way out of minor offences. Everyone talks openly about the problem of corruption in Cambodia—even high-level government officials. And sometimes it’s understandable; it is
no real secret that Cambodian police, teachers and government officials are paid so poorly that they are forced to supplement their salaries through corruption.
In all honesty, sometimes I did feel tempted to play the game just to get justice for people like Sinet and Akara. But Jedtha always says no, corruption is a slippery slope. And I know he’s right. Supporting the rule of law in Cambodia has to be one of our key goals if we want lasting change to happen, so the process of how we go about our work needs to be just as important as the outcome.
Not long after the trial of Akara’s cousin, Jedtha managed to track down Makara and Nimol’s sister, a twelve-year-old girl named Sida.
I think Jedtha might’ve been Sherlock Holmes in a past life because he’s a natural-born detective. Any time we need to find someone, he’s on it like a bloodhound.
He found out that Sida had been labour-trafficked to another family in the boys’ home town near the Thai border. He arranged for DoSVY to come with us to pick her up. We took Makara and Nimol along to help identify their sister.
After driving for an hour, we pulled up at a compound of about twenty grass huts on the edge of a rice field. A small group of adults emerged from the huts with little children trailing behind them.
The boys ran ahead and threw their arms around a beautiful young girl who was with the group. Her clothes were ragged, her hair was ratty and her skin much darker than the boys’, but I could see the family resemblance. I don’t think I’d ever seen the boys so happy. Tears were rolling down the girl’s face. She embraced the boys for several minutes before letting go. I blinked away a tear and went over to meet her.
The boys introduced me. ‘This is Tara! We love her. She’s really nice. We live with her at the onga.’ We were in the middle of exchanging greetings when the boys interrupted again: ‘Now you can come and live at the onga with us too!’
Meanwhile, Jedtha, Savenh and the men from DoSVY were talking to the extended family.
‘Makara, Nimol and Sida’s father is here,’ Jedtha told me, pointing in the direction of the street.
I could see a man wandering around on the road in front of the compound, muttering away to himself and gesticulating madly.
‘It’s very hard in Cambodia,’ Jedtha said. ‘There’s a lot of people with mental health problems but we have no way to help them.’
Certainly, it’s not uncommon to see people with mental health problems on the streets in Cambodia. Unkempt people with no clothes on. People ranting to themselves. Like a lot of them, the boys’ father didn’t seem particularly distressed or unhappy.
Still. It was sad.
‘And what about their mother?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know where their mother is. She has been missing for a long time. Her mother owed a debt to a family who live about one hour from here. She couldn’t afford to pay the debt, so she sold Sida to them for labour. Sida lived there for years, working for that family, but recently her grandmother bought her back. Now she has been living here for a few months but, even though it is her own family, she works very hard here, too. She has never been to school. We’ve explained to them now that trafficking and child labour is illegal and that every child has the right to go to school, so we’re arranging for her to come to CCT.’
I looked back over at the boys and Sida playing together, still ecstatic to be in each other’s company. It was hard to believe that she had spent most of her life being bought and sold like a slave.
None of the adults put up any objection to Sida leaving. When Jedtha told her she could come and live with her brothers she emitted a little squeak of happiness. ‘Yes!’ She ran to pack her belongings.
That same day, we went to pick up Makara, Nimol and Sida’s little brother, Sakana. He was only about four years old and had also been sold by his mother to a family near the Thai border.
It never fails to amaze me how keen Cambodian kids are to leave everything they’ve ever known to rush off and live in an orphanage. I suppose their attitude is driven by the adults. They all just see orphanages as a great opportunity.
In the weeks that followed, Sida took to life at CCT like a duck to water. She settled in and started school and worked hard to catch up. And she mothered her little brothers, of course. In no time at all she had learned to read and write and was topping her grade.
It was amazing considering everything she’d been through. She’d had to work incredibly hard when she was trafficked. Harvesting. Washing. Cooking. Cleaning. She suffered systematic abuse at the hands of the adults, too. Some of the things that happen to young girls in Cambodia would make your skin crawl. For Sida, it was about as bad as it gets—she needed surgery in order to make a full recovery from some of the injuries she’d received.
Around this time, my sister Noni and one of her best mates visited me in Battambang. It was great to see them.
Talking to them in English was oddly challenging at first. It was as if the gears in my brain kept seizing shut when I tried to swap from Khmer to English.
While Noni was visiting, we reunited two more kids with their siblings at CCT—Rithy’s stepsisters, Jendar and Lai.
When we drove out to see how Rithy’s family were doing, we found out that the children’s parents were very sick with HIV. They’d been living in a tiny hut in such abject poverty that they’d sent eight-year-old Lai to live with her grandparents.
They were delighted to see Rithy looking so well, and pleaded with us to take Lai and Jendar to CCT.
The girls had a baby sibling, who was also very sick with HIV. We tried to get medical help for the baby but, tragically, she died from AIDS just a few months after we brought Jendar and Lai to CCT.
When Jedtha managed to track down the parents and younger brother of Amara, Maly and Chanlina, we took the kids on a short road trip to see how the rest of the family was doing.
We travelled to a village in the north, close to the Thai border. The village was called Prachea Thorm and, according to a story that ran in the Cambodia Daily, it was founded in response to a severe cholera outbreak in an overcrowded slum in the large, gritty town of Poipet. To manage the outbreak, thousands of people from the slum were resettled in the new village.
I’d heard that this large rural village still had a post-apocalyptic feel to it, all these years later, and that poverty and its attendant grim problems—drug abuse, domestic violence, crime and disease—were rife. And it was a dismal place indeed. Some people were completely homeless, without even the most basic of shelters. Others were bringing up whole families in tiny straw-and-scrap-metal structures that looked more like a kid’s cubbyhouse than a home.
As we walked through the village with Amara, Maly and Chanlina, some of the local kids started to follow us. The three CCT kids seemed so out of place in Prachea Thorm—clean and well-fed, with shiny hair and glowing skin. The contrast between them and the ragged, malnourished village kids was stark.
The kids soon managed to track down the makeshift hut where their family lived. A couple in their fifties and a little boy came out when they heard Maly calling their names. They all looked absolutely overjoyed to see each other.
The parents doted on Amara, Chanlina and Maly the whole time and thanked me endlessly for looking after them. They struck me as very kind people who loved their kids. They were just poor, and not educated, so life was a horrible struggle. The whole family walked nearly twenty kilometres a day, every day, to work across the Thai border catching insects (a popular snack food) or scaling fish. Six-year-old Teng—who was just as bright and confident as his siblings—didn’t attend school; he went to work with his parents.
Every day, hundreds of Cambodians spill across the Thai border to work illegally, because that’s where the work is. (That’s how Amara, Maly and Chanlina—and quite a few other kids—ended up at SKO: they were caught by the Thai police, who transferred them to the Transit Centre at the Poipet border, who then sent them to the orphanage.)
But even the work over the border doesn’
t pay well. The family made barely enough to put food in their mouths. Sometimes they subsisted on rice. They had no running water, no toilets and no healthcare. In those circumstances, everything becomes about survival. If you don’t get up and find some money every day, you don’t eat. If you get sick, you’re screwed. It makes me crazy that human beings live like this in the twenty-first century. We have enough resources to go around. We can land a spacecraft on the moon. We should be able to work out how to overcome poverty.
While we were visiting, a man and woman dropped by to say hello. They were surrounded by a troupe of extremely familiar-looking children.
‘Oh my god!’ I gasped. ‘They look so much like Tula and Mao!’ Tula and Mao were Amara, Chanlina and Maly’s cousins, and they also lived at CCT.
Sure enough, the couple were Tula and Mao’s parents—and they had their other nine kids with them. My poor city-raised brain nearly exploded. How does someone have eleven children? How do you manage that? Seeing those familiar faces on all these thin, ragged little kids, reminded me of what Tula and Mao looked like when I’d first met them. It was heartbreaking.
Amara, Chanlina and Maly’s parents asked us repeatedly if their six-year-old son, Teng, could come and live with us, too.
At the time, it seemed like giving Teng the chance to grow up with his siblings at CCT, where he could go to school and access healthcare, was the right thing to do. But it bothered me terribly, the thought of putting the kids in the van and leaving their parents behind. It was obvious that these parents loved their children deeply and would be perfectly capable of raising them if they could just get some help to climb out of poverty. But we had no systems in place to support a family, especially one that lived so far from Battambang city. We wouldn’t have known where to start. And for the time being, getting Teng into school and giving him the same opportunities as his other siblings seemed like the next best option.