by John Curtis
Prior to this, during Russell's first trip to Thailand in August 2008, he and I were pursuing another ped who had popped up on our radar. This man, who I'll refer to by the pseudonym ‘Peter Benner’, was a wealthy man of mixed Thai and Australian heritage who split his time between Chiang Mai and Pattaya. I had staked out his last known address for a few weeks but the place was not being used.
Fortunately, a local informant told us he had seen Benner taking hill tribe boys to a room in the apartment building where Misao and I were living; I confirmed at the reception desk that Peter Benner had an apartment in our building. That was convenient. I asked if he dropped in regularly to pick up his mail and they said he came in about once a week. It was looking better and better.
I left an envelope for Benner at the desk asking him to call me as I was looking for a long-term apartment for my business partner. A few days later he rang and I organised for Russell and me to inspect his apartment the next day. Benner turned out to be a young-looking, handsome, likeable guy and we spent half the day with him pumping him for information. We managed to get most of his multiple apartment locations and even visited his own apartment, where I got covert shots of his unit and his vehicles and their registration numbers.
He had a good sense of humour and it was sad that he felt a need to abuse kids. He had everything anyone could want – wealth, looks, health and personality. He told us he was returning to Australia in a month and we passed this information on to the authorities. Customs were able to intercept him when he arrived in Australia and they examined his laptop. The last we heard was that they had found incriminating photos, but not enough to charge him. Once again, this is a numbers game. You win some, you lose some.
Our organisation has passed on information to the authorities in many countries, including our own, but I'm not sure how much good it has done in catching Australian sex tourists and expat paedophiles. Essentially, when it comes to catching paedophiles, The Grey Man conducts relatively simple, mundane, but labour-intensive investigations which at least progress to the stage of facilitating a police raid. I think it's odd that an NGO is doing this work but the Australian authorities, who are better equipped than us, don't. The AFP are good at their job but their presence in Thailand is more about liaison than investigation; this is understandable, but if they could work out a deal with the Thai government to pursue their own investigations into paedophiles a lot more could be done to stem the abuse.
ELEVEN
Lights, Cameras – Not Much Action
Claire and her film crew from Australian Story were itching to get to Thailand and, of course, they wanted to know there would be plenty there for them to film.
There had been a major operation before they got there and another one planned for after they were due to leave, but nothing during the time scheduled for their visit. I appreciated the effort the ABC was going to, and wanted to help, but on the other hand I couldn't conjure an operation out of thin air just to give them something to film and nor could I put the brakes on a current operation while we waited for Claire to get budgetary approval for the trip. I was running into dead ends, so we went over some old cases in our search for filming opportunities for the camera crew. I got in touch with Peng's mother – Peng was still at home at this time – and the mother and daughter agreed to be filmed. Peng's case showed the results and the human face of our operations.
I was prepared to show the crew around the parts of Thailand where we operated, and be ready to respond in case we turned up any leads on kids or traffickers, but as a fallback I also had some covert video footage that I'd recently shot while I'd been in-country on an operation with one of the volunteers, Tony.
Tony had popped up on our radar after the Richard Fidler interview. He'd previously served in the New South Wales police Special Weapons and Operations Squad as a sniper but was now retired. White-haired and solidly built, Tony looks more like someone's kindly uncle than a sniper. He's got a good, dry sense of humour, which is essential for this type of work, and he's a thinker. He's got a very philosophical bent and he and I have spent many an hour in girly bars and other dives pretending to be paedophiles, but actually talking about life, death, Buddhism, karma and life after death. He often berates me for dragging or sending him to the world's hellholes, but he loves it. Tony had been instrumental in the Weston case, keeping him under surveillance until the police and child protection authorities could swoop.
On our recent trip, Tony had joined me in Thailand and we travelled to Chiang Saen to meet with Kru Nam. She gave us some intel on bars in Chiang Rai that were offering young boys to paedophiles and Tony and I set off for the city, about an hour and a half away, to investigate. We had only been there ten minutes when Kru Nam's shelter director, Yutthaya, called us to give us some incredible news.
A guy who worked for the shelter at Mae Sai was taking a group of kids on an outing when he was accosted by a mamasan who brazenly asked him if he would sell her a couple of his young charges. The shelter worker fobbed the woman off, but took her mobile number. Kru Nam got her man to call the mamasan and set up a meeting with Tony and me, who would pose as paedophiles. As it had been young girls and boys the mamasan wanted to buy, I decided that Tony would play the part of a gay paedophile.
We turned around to head for Mae Sai and by the time we arrived there it was midnight. We parked in a quiet area near the police station and met with Kru Nam's guy and a female friend of his. He spoke no English, but I got the gist of what he was saying and they drove with us through a maze of lanes to the backstreets down by the river.
We eventually arrived at a brothel with a big poster for a local beer out the front. We immediately dubbed it the ‘beer brothel’. Our informants told us this was the mamasan's place. We took the informants home – via a circuitous route, in case we were followed. I offered them some cash and they refused it, but I insisted it was to cover their time. Reluctantly they took the money, which was out of my personal funds, not The Grey Man's. The reason I offered it to them was because I was so impressed that they had provided the information without any thought of personal gain.
Tony and I then returned to the brothel. We were met outside by an individual whose name we never did manage to learn. He guided us into the brothel, past a few farangs sitting at a table outside. Inside it was just as seedy and depressing as the hundreds of other such places I'd visited. I was carrying a daypack with a small video camera in it and a covert lens built into the single shoulder strap. It was good in low light and just what we needed now. The mamasan spoke with us for a while and then left us with the pimp to do any deals.
The pimp, who was a particularly unattractive looking man, gave us a gap-toothed smile and spread his hands. He was sorry, he said, but he had no children on the premises right then. He said he'd had a young girl, a thirteen-year-old, who would have been suitable for me, but she had recently been moved across the border into Burma, where she'd come from. He offered to take me into Burma via the Friendship Bridge if I was interested.
‘I'm not sure about that.’ We had an established relationship with the Thai police, which was working well, but we had no official contact or top cover in the military dictatorship across the bridge. I didn't fancy getting caught in Burma and having to explain to the generals there what I was doing looking for underage girls.
‘And you, sir . . .’ the man said, leering at Tony, ‘I have no boys here now, but I would be happy to give you yum yum.’
I fought back a laugh. The pimp was offering to give Tony oral sex.
‘Um, no thanks,’ Tony said.
I turned to him. ‘Go on. We've got plenty of time. I'll wait here for you . . . you two can take your time.’ I was trying to keep a straight face and laughing on the inside.
Tony gritted his teeth and glared at me, then looked back at the ugly pimp. ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
We hadn't performed a rescue, but the video footage we shot would eventually come in handy when the Australian Story doc
umentary was being produced.
Tony was to return home not long after this but he eventually became The Grey Man's director of operations based on his work with me in Thailand, his police background and his unflappable nature.
Claire received budgetary approval to come to Thailand and arrived about a week after Tony went home. Russell and Virginia arrived at the same time.
The TV people wanted to make maximum use of their time and they filmed from early morning to late evening, shooting everything they possibly could, while I hit the streets and tried to find some leads.
I took the crew to the beer brothel in Mae Sai and Claire said they wanted to film me and Russell going into it. They set the camera up in the back of the van and dropped me off nearby. As I walked down the street the van cruised past, filming me. The driver went around the block and when it came past again I walked into the brothel. The ugly pimp told me the underage girl was still in Burma, and again offered to take me to her.
‘Can't you bring her into Thailand? I'll pay good money.’
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes as he smoked. ‘Too risky. She no got ID or passport. Police checking everyone now.’ We decided to leave it there, as we couldn't risk going into Burma.
When I went out the van was cruising slowly down the street again. A couple of young guys out the front were pointing at it and, to my horror, I could see the cameraman in the back, and the lens pointing out a window. It was more visible than they'd realised. They drove off and disappeared around the corner. Russell and I followed them on foot and when we found them climbed in.
It was a really hectic and stressful week, trying to do the job and at the same time look after the camera crew. Even getting from job to job was a problem as the tuk tuk drivers all wanted to know what the big camera was for, and what we were doing in Thailand. They were curious and suspicious, and some seemed just plain worried. When we slowed down to film brothels in the red-light district in Santi Tam in Chiang Mai, bouncers came out to see what was going on. When we stopped at a bar, just to have a drink, one of the bar girls saw the camera and went and rang her boss, who wanted to know what we were doing there. The girl spoke to us and conveyed our story back to the boss.
While we were filming in the gay bar district I couldn't believe my luck – a paedophile we'd been searching for emerged from a bar and demanded to know who we were and why we were filming.
‘I'm studying at Chiang Mai University,’ I lied to him, ‘and we're just filming a documentary.’
We moved on and I cursed. On one hand I'd found a guy we'd been hunting, but on the other hand he could now identify me and there was no way I'd be able to go undercover and follow him or gain his confidence. It's impossible to do covert work with a TV crew in tow.
In recognition of the great work Kru Nam was doing at her shelter at Chiang Saen, The Grey Man had paid off the final repayments on a truck that would be used to transport kids from the shelter to school. Providing education or transport to school for trafficked kids was part of our brief, so we were happy to do it. The truck was an odd-looking open-topped thing of Chinese origin, designed for agricultural work, but it had been fixed up and painted and I thought the crew might like to film it as another tangible example of the support work we were doing.
We arrived at the shelter on the day the truck was taking kids to a local waterhole for a swim. All of the kids got on board and they were laughing and waving at the camera as the driver started the engine. He released the brake, engaged the gear and the truck set off, only to die ten metres later. The TV people were good-natured about it and we all had a laugh, as did the kids, while a mechanic was fetched.
To get the overlay footage needed for the documentary – the images to set the scene – we filmed the Chiang Mai night markets and the big temple, Doi Suthep, that overlooked the city. The cameraman and sound guy would get in a songthaew and I'd ride along behind them on my rented motorcycle with Misao on the back so they could film us. Panom was interviewed and he told the TV crew how he had been to Cambodia and been offered blow jobs by five-year-olds.
In between filming, Panom told me that the CWD was about to arrest a Thai porn king. Panom didn't know if the guy was into producing kiddie porn, and while it technically had nothing to do with our role, we thought that it would at least give the ABC people some action to film.
Panom spoke to the police, then called me. ‘John, they want us to help them with some money for expenses so they can do the raid.’
I was furious. ‘Forget it! I reckon they owe us money after what we spent on the Laos trafficking case!’ These were the same guys that we'd helped out on the Laotian people-trafficking case, which had nearly cleaned out our funds thanks to Panom's largesse and penchant for big cars.
Despite my outburst, I knew that the film crew was desperate for action of the cops-kicking-in-doors variety, so I reluctantly got Panom to follow up with the police again and find out how much they wanted us to chip in.
‘Twenty thousand baht,’ Panom said; around eight hundred Australian dollars.
‘That's bullshit.’ It was nearly midnight and I'd been out all day and half the night with the TV crew and I lost it. ‘I've had a gutful of this place and its bloody people. Everyone's on the take and no one cares about these kids. I may as well pack up and move to bloody Cambodia!’
I wasn't sure whether Panom was serving our interests or those of the police. After my dummy spit, though, I calmed down and got back to Panom, telling him to stay in touch with the cops in case they decided to take the crew along with them out of the goodness of their hearts. In the end, the police decided it was too risky having a foreign TV crew with them in case they stuffed up the raid. That was the smartest call the police made, because at dawn on the day of the bust they hit the guy's house and he wasn't there. His mum was home and she told the officers she didn't know where her son the pornographer was. They hadn't bothered to do any surveillance first or check on his whereabouts. Apparently, as the dumbfounded officers were milling around out the front, a neighbour discreetly pointed to the house on the other side. The cops hit that one and found the target, who was busy smashing stacks of porn DVDs.
Although we didn't make any busts during the filming we had the covert footage from the beer brothel, loads of atmospheric material, and also video of the projects we were supporting in the hill tribe villages.
It seemed the crew had everything they needed – well, almost. ‘John, if you don't allow us to show your face, I don't think the ABC will run with the story,’ Claire said. A hell of a lot of work had gone into it so far – from both the crew and our own people. I thought long and hard about what Claire was asking, and what it would mean for me. In truth, I was tired – nearly worn out. I'd been thinking for some time about stepping down from the president's role and moving deeper into the shadows of the organisation, but I had formed The Grey Man and I had the feeling that it would be hard for me to justify my stepping down to Russell and all of our supporters.
It occurred to me, I have to admit, that what Claire was asking would give me a way out: if I showed my face on TV, it would make it harder for me to be involved with the undercover stuff in Thailand. With my cover blown, I believed I would have a legitimate reason to step back from both the operational and support work and spend more time with my wife and daughter. Also, if the funding support that Claire had predicted came through then I could afford to employ someone to take over the massive administrative task that comes with running a charity. We'd had volunteers helping out with paperwork, updating our blog, receiving donations and replying to correspondence, but I still felt we'd be better off paying someone to do it full time. The operation to bust the child traffickers from Laos was a great result for us, but it had chewed up about $7000 from our bank account and we were down to our last couple of grand. We needed the money the publicity would generate. I told Claire that she could show my face on the program.
In May 2009, Misao and I decided we'd had enough of C
hiang Mai and Thailand for the time being. I remember at the end of one operation, Misao and I were in the back of a car and we were just so over the petty bureaucracy and posturing of the police, and the way they and Panom always had their hands out, that we just threw back our heads, wound down the windows and screamed, ‘Aaargh!’ to blow off some steam. So I let Panom, Russell and others handle Grey Man operations and walked away from it all for a bit. After the filming was over, we went to Japan for five weeks and had a fantastic holiday. It was the first time I had been in Asia and not working to find kids. We meditated in Zen temples and stayed in shukubo (monks' lodgings). We travelled on the shinkansen (bullet train) and visited the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo and Yokohama and walked in the forests of Kamakura. We stayed with a number of Japanese friends and it was a wonderful time. I was feeling a pull to the spiritual side again and could easily have become a monk. Another bonus was that while we were in Japan we spoke at a number of Rotary clubs. At one event the president of an all-female businesswomen's group called International Social Services (ISS) asked us to speak at her club. It cost us $600 to travel by shinkansen to their club, but they donated $4000 to us for speaking and funded one of our school transport projects for a year.
We flew back into Australia in June 2009, the day after the Australian Story documentary was aired on TV. Luckily one of our volunteers who had been a great supporter, Robyn Magers, had offered Misao and me a flat under her house for a nominal rent. It was just what we needed as I was virtually broke, having funded our time in Thailand from my own savings.
Misao and I were joking on the flight home that because of the ABC story we'd be mobbed by the paparazzi when we landed at Brisbane airport. We weren't, of course, but the office had been swamped by a wave of calls from people wishing us well and wanting to donate money or volunteer. In fact, the volume of correspondence was so big – there were hundreds of emails to be dealt with – that the volunteer who'd been handling our correspondence while we were away had to tell people someone would get back to them within two weeks.