The Grey Man

by John Curtis

  That someone turned out to be me.

  Far from being able to step away from the admin side of things, I ended up being as swamped as I had been after the Richard Fidler interview. Again, I was up until the early hours of the morning getting back to people in seemingly never-ending email chains, and telephoning people. This went on for weeks. Misao was very unhappy. She'd come to Thailand with me only after I'd threatened to go it alone, and we had both been sick of the place when we'd left. We had an absolute ball on holiday in Japan and, just when it seemed like I had my life back and we would be able to spend more time together, I was in the thick of it again.

  The Australian Story program was seen by an estimated 1.2 million people. We had loads of messages of support, but a week after the documentary went to air we'd only received about $800 in donations. It was a long way short of the $30,000 Claire had predicted. However, once I started getting through the backlog of people who emailed us, the aftershock happened and the money started flooding in. The bank account started filling and by the time I'd replied to everyone who had contacted us the tally was closer to $40,000. It was incredible. We could pay our man in-country and continue to support the programs that were keeping vulnerable kids out of the clutches of pimps and traffickers.

  In the same vein as the man who contacted Russell after the Richard Fidler radio interview and told him he wanted help to assassinate the Bishop, the TV documentary also brought a few interesting people out of the woodwork. One man wrote to me telling me he was concerned that he'd seen workers welding in Thailand without goggles. He wanted to know what I could do about that. I suggested that he collect up some old welding goggles and send them to Thailand if he was that worried about it! I had other priorities.

  As I'd hoped, Australian Story also boosted our pool of volunteers. In contrast to the way I chased up the people who'd pledged money to us, when going through the emails from potential volunteers I took my time. I'd learned that it was better to make these people wait a while.

  Many people were moved to do something or offer their services after seeing the program, but a high proportion of them later lost interest or did not follow through. I reckon that for every hundred emails I receive from people volunteering to work for The Grey Man there are about five who stick with it and whose services we can use. For a lot of people the idea of saving a kid is probably a nice fantasy; in fact, I'd read somewhere that the number one non-sexual fantasy for people in the US was to save someone else's life. I think many potential volunteers saw themselves carrying a grateful child to freedom, but I knew from experience that wasn't the way it worked. I learned after the Conversation Hour interview that our requirement for volunteers to get a police criminal record check done on themselves, at a cost of about $40, knocked out 80 per cent of applicants straightaway, because they either couldn't be bothered or didn't want to commit their own money. I wanted the sort of people who would still be hassling me for work six months after contacting me.

  We had some interesting people come forward, including serving and former state and federal police officers and ex-military guys, some of whom were working as contractors in Afghanistan. One of those contractors had also worked in industrial espionage in Australia, and was currently doing security for a big petroleum company. He showed up with his own night vision goggles, and turned out to be a good asset, as did a number of the cops, whom we were subsequently able to use on operations.

  The documentary also helped with our fundraising activities. From our first dinner, where we had forty people who were mostly friends of mine or Russell's, we were now pulling crowds of a hundred and forty.

  A couple of days after we arrived back in Australia, Misao and I went into the Kenmore Shopping Centre near where we were living and a woman ran out of a coffee shop and stopped us. ‘Were you on Australian Story?’ she asked. I said that we were. ‘I love what you guys are doing,’ she said, which was nice to hear.

  On another occasion Misao and I were in a food court and a guy came up and said, ‘Were you on TV?’

  ‘Yes’, I said. ‘I'm surprised you recognised us.’

  ‘No, not you . . . your wife, I recognised her.’

  When Misao and I were looking for a house to buy, the real estate agent said to me, ‘You look familiar.’

  ‘I was on TV,’ I said.

  ‘Really,’ she replied. ‘What was it about?’

  I told her about The Grey Man, and the agent said, ‘Oh, right. I saw that, but I didn't think that was you. I do remember the guy with the grey hair and the moustache, though.’ That was Russell!

  I hadn't agreed to show my face for reasons of personal glory. In fact, I wanted to distance myself from the organisation. I thought that using my alias was proof that I wasn't doing this for personal aggrandisement. However, my false name got me in trouble as it turned out there was a John Curtis in the Australian Federal Police. The AFP in Thailand asked me to stop using his name as it was causing them headaches having to explain to their superiors that I wasn't him whenever my name turned up in the media. I ignored them, as it was just a storm in a teacup and yet another waste of my time. It wouldn't matter what name I used, someone somewhere might take exception to it.

  As it turned out, being on TV didn't compromise my security, and apart from the odd second glance people don't recognise me anymore. I'm happy about that, but my plan of easing my way out of the presidency didn't work.

  TWELVE

  Action Always Brings Opposition

  I was always expecting the type of work we did would bring some opposition. Paul Watson from Sea Shepherd went through storms of criticism, as did Greenpeace before him, and we've had our fair share as well. I expected we would cop flak from some politically correct NGO which decided that child rescue was the wrong way to tackle the problem of child trafficking and prostitution. We did get that, but only ever to a very minor degree.

  One of the reasons The Grey Man liked to stay in the background was that I'd learned there was real jealousy between different NGOs that regularly manifested itself in turf wars. The Grey Man is, principally, an undercover operation and we're happy for the credit for joint operations to go to the police, or other organisations who will take care of the kids. We weren't fundraising in Thailand, so it wasn't as though we were trying to take donor money away from anyone else, and the last thing we wanted was the faces of our operatives splashed across the front page of the Bangkok Post. Rather than setting up a shelter of our own for rescued kids and run the risk of straying outside our own area of expertise and putting ourselves in competition with similar facilities, we preferred to work with other NGOs better suited to the ongoing care or repatriation of the children.

  We became a bit better known among the NGO community after the Laotian trafficking operation, because of the scale of the bust and the number of cops involved. Sompop Jantraka told us we were now on the radar and people from other charities were asking questions about us and our motivation.

  Ironically, some of the feedback was that other organisations (supposedly) involved in child rescue wanted to know why they hadn't heard of us and why we hadn't had the courtesy to introduce ourselves or talk to them about working with them. I had to laugh when I heard who these people were, as it turned out they were NGOs that I had approached when I'd first arrived in Thailand – and they had all rejected my offers to volunteer and assist them. Some of their wariness at the time was understandable, of course, as I was operating alone and from their point of view it was possible I was a paedophile trying to get close to their wards. In fact, The Grey Man has already had three convicted paedophiles try to join us, but our vetting procedure is extremely thorough and we picked them up immediately.

  Inevitably, these ‘rival’ organisations now started to question our methods and our motives. Some of them seemed to believe that we weren't team players and that we were just another version of IJM, whom they considered to be cowboys. Others thought we were a bunch of Rambos.

  ‘When I fi
rst heard of you,’ a woman from a major international charity told me, ‘I thought, oh my God, what a bunch of cowboys. You guys take people off the streets in Australia and send them to Thailand to go busting into places and rescue kids!’

  I explained to her that, first of all, we didn't just send anyone who volunteered up to Thailand: everyone who volunteered to work with us had to go through a police check and a variety of other checks, and many of our operatives in the field had a police background.

  I gave her some more detail on our organisation and she said, ‘Oh, that's okay then.’

  I smiled politely and nodded, but at the same time I was thinking, ‘Who the fuck are you to stand in judgement of our organisation and the way we work, based on some rumour or half-baked notion you've picked up from someone else who doesn't know what we do?’ It was at times like that I hated having any profile at all. It seemed the more successful we became the more likely it was that people would want to bring us down or find fault with us. We have always tried to be team players; however, we didn't have time for organisations which would prefer to sit around writing policies to getting out into the field and doing something.

  I have seen the UN up close and wasn't impressed. They would come to hill tribe villages for an hour, nose around and go off to write a report while staying at an expensive resort down the road, enjoying what their western salaries can buy them in a developing country. In contrast, Grey Man people funded their own way, travelled cheap and lived with the villagers. The cost of one white-painted UN four-wheel drive would fund The Grey Man for a year. I didn't want to be part of a team that wasted donors' money.

  I have a lot of time for Sompop, who is a great guy, but I'd heard that he'd been critical of us on occasion. Sompop had contacted Panom and asked him if The Grey Man could help track down a girl, a former sex worker, who had run away from his shelter. I asked Panom if he could find out some more details and it turned out the girl, who was now a young woman and not underage at all, had actually been sprung from the shelter by her boyfriend. She'd jumped the fence and he'd been waiting for her, on his motorcycle, and sped off into the night. To make matters worse, the boyfriend was a policeman!

  ‘I think we should try to find this girl,’ Panom said to me.

  ‘You've got to be joking,’ I replied. There was no way I was going to waste money donated by mums and dads and kids in Australia to try and bring back a woman of legal age who had run off with her bloody boyfriend. I'm sure I hurt Panom's feelings and, by implication, I guessed I'd offended Sompop as well, but so be it.

  Some of the people who started dishing the dirt on us were closer to home. Panom's good mate, the Major, took umbrage when we failed to pay some of his expenses quickly enough for his liking.

  As I've described, I accepted that one of the best ways we could contribute in Thailand was to act as a catalyst for operations to free kids, and bust traffickers and the occasional paedophile. The Grey Man's role, as things evolved, was to find the kids or the criminals, conduct surveillance operations and then work with the police to get warrants issued and arrests made. I knew the last piece of the puzzle – the police involvement – usually wouldn't happen unless we could contribute to the legitimate costs of the operation. We weren't paying bribes, but rather covering the costs of getting cops and prosecutors to where they needed to be and putting them up in accommodation and feeding them for the duration of the operation. Good or bad, right or wrong, this was how things worked in Thailand.

  Police officers such as the Major would submit an expenses claim to us and we would scrutinise it before paying it. While I was in Thailand and able to hand him the cash there was no problem, but from Australia there were sometimes delays in reimbursing him due to bank errors or poor communication. Also, all of us in Australia were holding down day jobs, so it wasn't always easy to get payments sent through immediately.

  I asked the Major to check the bank details he'd given us and to get back to me. Instead of doing as I asked, the Major simply became pissed off and started accusing us, via emails to Panom, of being unprofessional in our management practices. Instead of complaining about not being reimbursed on time, he chose to make accusations about the organisation. As I've found out, though, whenever it's not about the money, it usually is about the money.

  The problem festered after another attempt at getting the money to him failed. At the same time I was becoming increasingly doubtful of Panom's ability to be all that we expected him to be in Thailand and I couldn't help but wonder if he'd had a hand in the Major's dissatisfaction, as they were close. All this was over the equivalent of about a hundred and twenty Australian dollars, which the Major eventually refused to accept, although we tried a number of times to get it to him. He seemed to be implying that I – or someone else in The Grey Man – wasn't handling the money in a responsible manner. That was ludicrous, as I'd spent tens of thousands of dollars of my own money on the charity by this stage and could never hope to recoup it by dipping into the petty cash. I emailed the Major and told him that the fact was that I was more concerned with rescuing kids than overseeing the payment of his expenses, especially when it seemed likely the stuff-up was his fault. I pointed out to him, again, that all our volunteers paid their own airfares, accommodation and expenses, and that the only people getting paid here were Panom and the Thai police.

  I was so sick of them by this stage, I started firing off emails left, right and centre, venting my rage. ‘I am inclined to pull the pin on Thailand and move to Cambodia,’ I said in an email to Russell.

  I asked Panom who he thought was behind a rising tide of negative rumours about The Grey Man, some of which may have been fuelling the Major's tantrums.

  After this Panom and the Major suggested I sack Russell. I passed on the email to Russell and jokingly said, ‘Looks like you will have to go’. They were getting out of control telling me who to keep and who to get rid of. I put up with their bullshit to a degree, whereas Russell didn't, so I figured they thought it would be easier to deal with me only.

  ‘Sompop is still annoyed that Russell did not authorise the operation to recover the girl who ran away from the shelter,’ Panom told me. Not that one again. I doubted that Sompop had said anything, and I shook my head. I told Panom that both Russell and I had agreed that mission would have been a waste of time. ‘The Grey Man is an anti-child-trafficking and anti-child-prostitution organisation. We don't go looking for girls who run off with their boyfriends.’

  Panom said something that flabbergasted me. He told me he had thought our organisation was anti-trafficking in general, not focused on children. Our slogan did say ‘Fighting Child Trafficking’, so Panom's comments were just too stupid to bother with.

  In addition, Panom didn't seem to have taken on board what I'd said to him after the arrest of the Laotian traffickers, about watching his expenses. He had a penchant for macho four-wheel-drive vehicles and would often hire a big twin-cab Isuzu ute (pickup), to transport the arresting police to a job. I pointed out to him that you could fit the same number of people into a hatchback as you could a pickup, because I was damn sure no self-respecting Thai policeman would want to dirty his uniform or civilian clothes by riding in the tray of a pickup truck. The cost difference was about 50 per cent more for the truck and while we weren't talking about a hell of a lot of money there was a principle at stake. Other NGOs have been rightly criticised in the past for spending donors' money on flash vehicles rather than people in need and while supporting the police through things such as transport and accommodation costs was one way of ensuring operations went ahead, there was no need to waste a cent. On each occasion I raised the matter of expenses Panom told me he understood, and then went on to ignore me. His attitude was typical of Thai males, who can be extremely immature.

  Things started to come to a head between us when I asked Panom a number of times for the contact details of the boy who had agreed to testify against Weston. The boy had said that since Weston was paying for his educa
tion he would have to leave school if he testified, so Panom had asked if The Grey Man would pay for the boy's schooling. I agreed and we organised an Australian sponsor to fund his fees. Although I continued to ask, Panom couldn't be bothered giving me the boy's details and we lost him. Someone else then sent an email complaining of Panom's failure to follow up in a rape case.

  There were some more heated exchanges between Panom and me via email, but when I told him we had to let him go I wished Panom well, and I meant it. In the right organisation (probably his own), I believe he would shine. He was very helpful in putting The Grey Man on the map, and getting arrests, and I will always be grateful to him for that. I tried to find Panom a job after we sacked him, but from what I've heard, Panom is flying solo now, though still working closely with the Major, hunting paedophiles. I truly wish both of them well.

  The two main things I'd learned so far from my time in Thailand were how best to manage an NGO in a foreign country and how to work with the local authorities. It mightn't sound terribly politically correct, but I would never again hire a local person to manage our operations in Thailand without direct supervision. Or anywhere else we may establish ourselves. I believe that what we need in overall charge in-country are Australians, who are fully cognisant of the obligation they owe to the mums, dads and kids in Australia who are our fundraising base. We need people who understand and embrace our mission, to rescue kids and keep them out of the hands of the traffickers. We don't want to be sidetracked again by locals running to a different agenda, no matter how noble they or their causes may be.

  At the beginning, Panom was an easy choice for Russell and me to make in running our Thai operations because he'd been involved in similar work with IJM. This was our first mistake – getting someone in to run our organisation whose skills and mindset were really better suited to setting up another IJM, rather than fulfilling our mission.