The Grey Man

by John Curtis

  ‘Her name Oy. She virgin,’ were the first words the man said. The girl stared at us and showed no reaction to the sales pitch. ‘Boom boom: 800 baht.’ It would have cost me about thirty Australian dollars to have sex with a child.

  I was pretty sure the girl wasn't a virgin, because then the price would have been well into the thousands of baht. It seemed even her youth was now a near-worthless commodity to the unsmiling, taciturn pimp.

  ‘How old are you, Oy?’ I asked her in Thai.

  ‘Sip sam,’ she said. Thirteen. Christ!

  I told the pimp and the mamasan I'd take the girl. I paid him and he nodded and closed the door behind them. The mamasan would have stayed long enough to get her cut from the pimp before heading home. I sat down on the bed and patted the thin mattress, motioning for the girl to sit beside me.

  ‘I'm not going to hurt you . . . I'm not going to have sex with you,’ I told the girl.

  Oy stared at me.

  ‘Do you like this work you do?’ I asked her.

  She shrugged and pursed her lips. ‘Mai pen rai,’ she said, which is a common Thai phrase for ‘it's okay’, or perhaps closer to ‘whatever’, or ‘it doesn't matter’.

  I found out Oy was one of the Karen people, from the Burmese hills on the other side of the Mae Sai border crossing. One day, a man had come to her village and told her father that he would find a job for her in a laundry across the border in Chiang Rai. The man had paid Oy's father 3000 baht (about A$120) as an advance on her wages. She had effectively been sold, but instead of going to work in a laundry she was taken to a karaoke bar and told she was expected to service male clients. Oy said she had protested, and was locked up without food or water until she'd agreed. I didn't often hear of girls being beaten or tortured to force them to work as sex workers (though it does happen from time to time); generally more subtle, and arguably more effective methods are used, capitalising on the ingrained compliance of girls in a patriarchal society, and playing on their instilled sense of a need to follow their parents' wishes, no matter what they have been set up for. From Chiang Rai, Oy had eventually been moved to the dingy brothel in Chiang Mai where I had found her.

  ‘Would you like to go back home, to your village?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I have no money.’ To ensure the girls never amass enough money to escape, pimps pay them very little.

  ‘I can get you out of here. I can help you.’

  I gave Oy some extra cash, on top of what I had already paid the pimp, and told her to tell him that I wanted to see her again in a few nights' time.

  The next time I visited the brothel the pimp seemed more relaxed around me, and once I'd paid him he simply pointed the way to Oy's room. This time I asked her if she was permitted to leave the brothel. To my surprise, Oy said that she was allowed out during the day; I guessed that because she had so little money the pimp wasn't worried that she would get far. I arranged for her to meet with me the next day around the noodle stalls north of Thapae Gate. She found me there at the agreed time and I again checked with her that she did indeed want to go home. Although Oy was only thirteen, I wanted to reassure myself she was genuine about leaving, and wasn't just taking me for a ride. Oy assured me she did, although she was worried about what impact her decision to run away might have on her family. I wasn't sure, as her Thai was pretty basic, but I got the impression that either she or the pimp was sending some money back to her family.

  ‘Don't worry about that,’ I said. ‘I'll give you 8000 baht.’ Her father would probably be happy with that, I thought. It was about three hundred and twenty Australian dollars, no doubt a huge sum to her, and the amount seemed to reassure her, but she didn't show any other emotions – no fear, no happiness, nothing. Perhaps she thought I was just another lying farang.

  I had an acquaintance in Chiang Mai named Nop who came from the hill tribes, and I arranged for him to be with me at the Montri Hotel the next time I met Oy. My plan was to pay Nop to escort her to Mae Sai in a songthaew, a pickup truck converted so it can carry about ten paying passengers. I wasn't even sure I knew the name of her village, let alone directions to it, so his help was essential. My Thai was improving, but it actually took me years to get the accents and intonations of the language right, and this girl spoke a whole different dialect.

  When Oy arrived at the hotel I bought her a hot chocolate, which seemed to be a new experience for her, and passed over the money I had promised her. She still seemed quite reserved and I realised that going home would be hard for her. Aside from whatever emotional issues she would have confronting her father, who had sold her – albeit unwittingly – into prostitution, she would probably be expected to continue to contribute to the family income, despite the money I'd given her. When she was faced with the reality of having to find another job there was, I guessed, the real possibility that she would return to prostitution.

  After we finished our drinks we went outside and hailed a songthaew. There was no exclamation of joy or thanks as she climbed into the back of the people mover with her hill tribe escort. I stood in the street just watching her.

  Horns honked and tuk tuks weaved past me. All around were the ever-present noises and smells of Asia, a cloying cocktail of exhaust smoke and sweet spices, the smell of the durian fruit and a hint of sewage. Oy looked back at me, briefly, from the back of the vehicle as it pulled away. Shyly, she raised a hand, just a little, and gave me the tiniest wave.

  This was my first rescue, and as with my later experiences there were no tears or shouts of jubilation, hugs or kisses, or fairytale endings. Maybe there would be when she returned to her home village, but I wouldn't be there to see it. The truth is that there is no certainty about what will happen to these children later in life, or if they will ever truly be able to recover from the wounds they have suffered. I was relieved that I had achieved something I'd wanted to do, and happy that I'd been able to save her, but those feelings were tinged with sadness for what had happened to this child already in her short life, and what might still be to come.

  Even now, I still start to cry when I think about that moment, about that first girl. I never heard what happened to Oy. My hill tribe acquaintance, Nop, told me he had seen her safely to the border at Mae Sai and watched her walk across the bridge into Burma. I guess she had ID.

  What I did know, however, was that my life had turned a corner. From meeting the Lahu people and helping, so I hoped, to improve the lot of children in Sila's village, and now liberating Oy, I felt the fog of depression start to clear and I no longer considered myself on a one-way trip out of life. It had taken me much longer than I'd envisioned to rescue the first girl and I still had more to do – four more girls, if I was to keep my promise to Emma.

  I'd told Anna that I would be gone for only six weeks. That had been a lie, but now as that deadline had passed, I knew I needed to call and talk to her and Emma. Anna and I had parted on good terms and I valued her support.

  ‘I'm going to need some more time up here,’ I told Anna over the phone.

  ‘Take as much time as you need,’ she said. ‘But it'd be great if you could be here for Emma's first day at school.’ That would be in about six weeks' time.

  ‘I miss you, Daddy. When are you coming home?’ Emma said when Anna put her on.

  Her words cut into me, and I knew that I'd been a fool to think that I could end it all and never see her again. That's what depression does to you. ‘I'll be home in time to take you to big school, darling.’ I smiled down the phone.

  As much as I missed Emma, I also felt I couldn't leave Thailand immediately – especially now that I was making some headway. I believed I had finally found my purpose in life and I was still determined to meet my promise of rescuing five girls for Emma whatever it took – and being back in Australia before school began for the year.

  Rightly or wrongly, I wasn't scared when the mamasan took me to the hotel where the Karen girl was being kept. She'd thought it a dangerous place, but I
'd never really felt threatened. I wondered if the experience of growing up with my brother – and surrounded by people who wanted to kneecap him – had made me tougher than I imagined.

  My luck, as well as my life, had changed, and soon after the first rescue I picked up a lead on another underage girl in Chiang Mai. By this stage I'd struck up a friendship of sorts with Tam, the tuk tuk driver who lived at the end of my street. I had initially approached him to practise my Thai, giving him the cover story I used with friendly locals: that I was a university student doing research on child prostitution and trafficking in Thailand. Tam told me he knew of a place that offered underage girls. Tuk tuk drivers usually knew where the brothels were and what they were offering, as they would receive kickbacks from the mamasans and pimps for taking customers to their premises.

  Tam agreed to take me to the brothel and I invited my Canadian friend Peter to come along. In the first instance we just planned to cruise past the place to check it out, and maybe snap a couple of quick pictures.

  We drove to the area south-west of Huay Kaew Road and Tam took us down a narrow backstreet. He pointed out the brothel, a nondescript single-storey building painted green. There was nothing to suggest what was going on inside.

  I told him, in Thai, to carry on to the end of the street, do a U-turn and make a second pass, slowly, so Peter could snap some shots with his camera. Tam nodded and made the turn, but when we got back to the green building he veered over to the footpath and pulled up right outside the front door. Clearly my Thai wasn't as good as I thought.

  ‘No, no, no!’ I hissed at him. The doorway was open, but fortunately no one was there. Still, so much for covert reconnaissance.

  Peter quickly fired off a few more pictures, the motor drive of his camera clicking and whirring as I got Tam to kick the tuk tuk hurriedly back to life and get us the hell out of there. Peter was a great guy, very smart, and could speak ten languages, but he was also the sort who would start telling complete strangers what we were up to. For this reason I couldn't take him inside with me on any covert operations.

  The next day I got Tam to take me back to the brothel on my own. I went inside and he came in with me, to help translate. He knew the owner and had clearly taken people there before, though as far as I knew he wasn't usually in the business of chauffeuring paedophiles around. This was where I met Kem, the girl I had to spirit away on the back of my rented motorcycle, with the brothel's bouncer following me in hot pursuit.

  The interesting thing about the brothel where Kem was a virtual prisoner, and the one where I'd found the first girl, Oy, was that unlike the mainstream brothels and karaoke bars they did not seem to be set up for foreigners. Part of this was no doubt because the operators realised the importance of keeping their business hidden away in nondescript places, but even once I got inside these places there was still no sense that the decor or set-up was in any way geared towards westerners.

  In fact, in all the years since those first rescues I have never encountered foreign paedophiles in any of the brothels and seedy hotels where I've conducted operations; with the occasional exception, other Grey Man teams have generally had the same experience. I certainly don't want to downplay the threat of foreigners to the safety of children in Asia, but everything I've observed tells me that on balance the majority of abuse against children in places such as Thailand and Cambodia – perhaps as high as 75 per cent – is perpetrated by local men.

  Either way, my primary goal then – and now – was to rescue the children caught up in this cynical trade, not to track down paedophiles. As 2004 drew to a close, a new part of my life had begun; I had no idea at the time that my individual mission would result in the development of an international organisation that would send teams to south-east Asia to rescue children and garner significant amounts of media attention and public support. Also, although I may not have realised it at the time, I was actually rescuing myself.

  FIVE

  Paying the Boatman

  The border crossing between Thailand and Burma at Mae Sai is called the Friendship Bridge, which is ironic given the heavy fighting and artillery duels that have gone on there over the years.

  The bridge was shut down for a year in 1994 when the Mong Tai private army attacked the town of Tachilek on the Burmese side of the river. Heavy fighting and shelling between Thai and Burmese troops closed the bridge again in 2001 and once more in 2002. Tensions still arise from time to time, but it was quiet when I went there around the end of 2004, to carry out a reconnaissance and, like most westerners who visit, to renew my Thai visa. I'd heard plenty of stories about Mae Sai being a transit point and destination for trafficked kids. By this stage I'd conducted three successful rescues, and in spite of a few more false starts I was starting to feel pretty good about things.

  My third rescue actually involved two girls. I'd found the third girl in Chiang Rai, where I stayed at a cheap hotel. There were a few pimps working the car park next to the hotel and I asked them to find me a young girl. They introduced me to a young girl from the Karen people. Language was a real problem for me with this case, as this girl spoke very little Thai and since I didn't know Chiang Rai or anyone there I didn't want to risk asking anyone local for help with my mission. Instead, I bought one of those cheap dictaphones and on the pretext of testing it out, I found a Karen girl who worked in the markets and spoke English to say some phrases into the recorder. I had her say, ‘I am here to help’; ‘Would you like to return home?’; ‘I can take you, don't be afraid’; and ‘Are you afraid of the people you work for?’ I had a few false starts with the car park pimps, but eventually found an underage girl and played her my tapes. We met a couple of times and when the appointed time came to leave she showed up with a friend, so I took both of them to the Burmese border, gave them money, and sent them on their way.

  Before attempting my next rescue, I decided to conduct a reconnaissance across the border into Burma. The Mae Sai bridge itself is about 200 metres long, but the watercourse it spans, the Sai River, is barely 30 metres wide. I drove there from Chiang Mai in a small rental car to join the throng of farang doing the visa run from Mae Sai on the Thai side to Tachilek on the other. The deal was that when your visa was about to expire, you could cross briefly into Burma, pay five US dollars for the Burmese entry visa and then walk back across the bridge into Thailand and have your passport stamped with a new tourist visa. A visitors' visa in Thailand only lasts thirty days so the visa run to Mae Sai was a normal part of life for tourists in Chiang Mai.

  The other thing westerners come to Mae Sai for is sex. This far from Bangkok the girls are relatively cheap, at 500 baht (A$20) an hour.

  The crossing and the towns on either side have become a magnet for market stalls, beggars and gem dealers selling Burmese rubies. The rubies, if they're real, are said to be of Thai origin because it's illegal to sell Burmese rubies in Thailand; in reality, though, no one has much doubt about their pedigree. The beggars are mostly kids, sent to the busy border zone in many cases to scrounge money for their ya ba–addicted parents. If they're lucky they can also raise enough to bring home a little food on top of the money needed for drugs.

  I checked into a cheap hotel in Mae Sai, left the car there and walked to the bridge. I ignored the beggars and gave not much more than a passing glance to the market stalls that lined the dusty street. The stallholders were mostly Burmese, or ethnic Chinese, selling everything from food and drinks to knock-off clothing and sunglasses. Mae Sai is apparently also a major crossing point for amphetamines from Burma into Thailand.

  I breezed through the Thai border post and walked along the bridge to the other side. The Burmese border officials were uniformly surly. I wondered, as I slid my passport over the counter, if these guys were taught in basic training how not to smile at people.

  A friend of a friend who worked for an NGO had recommended a trustworthy English-speaking guide in Tachilek, and I met him on the other side of the bridge. The guide took me through the marke
ts on the Burmese side. While I looked like just another tourist dipping his toe in a country famed for its oppressive military dictatorship, I was actually there to look for ways to cross in and out of Burma illegally, although my guide had no inkling of my real purpose.

  There was an element of risk, for both me and my local contact, as I'd been told that the Burmese Secret Police routinely follow foreigners. As we walked the streets and lanes of Tachilek, I ran counter-surveillance drills, stopping every now and then under the pretext of checking out a vendor's pirated brand names while glancing back to see if I could spot anyone I'd seen already. I'd walk on a bit further, turn down a narrow lane between a couple of stalls, and walk nearly to the end, then do an abrupt about-face as if I'd made a mistake. After about half an hour of this I was happy it was all clear.

  I'm not really a shopper, but even so I spent a couple of hours walking around the markets with my guide. I didn't want him to become suspicious so I made no mention of young girls, but gradually I steered our wanderings down towards the river.

  We stood side by side on the edge of the muddy water, looking across. ‘Amazing how narrow the gap is between here and Thailand,’ I said conversationally.

  ‘Hey,’ a teenage Thai boy yelled from across the river, ‘you want Viagra, cheap?’ He held up a box with the drug company's logo on it, waving it at me. Perhaps I looked like I needed it.

  Near us, a group of young Burmese boys walked down to the water. One of them stripped down to just a pair of shorts, jumped into the river from the stone-revetted bank and started swimming towards the Thai side. A short distance away two Burmese soldiers leaned on the bridge railing, smoking and chatting. The border guards obviously knew what was going on, but they paid barely any attention to the boy as he climbed up the stonework on the far side of the river. On our bank, the boy's friends waved and cheered as their comrade, now a mini hero, grinned and waved back.