The Grey Man (14 page)

I did all that and we got our application approved, but before we could finalise it we had a real drama trying to think of what to call ourselves. We discussed names like ‘Shadow' and also looked at Thai names, but even though there were only eight of us it was hard to agree on something. Finally, I remembered that old army term The Grey Man and realised that was us: we were in the background, not looking for recognition; we worked undercover; and we just wanted to do our job.

We were caught up for a while with the bullshit of having meetings and getting organised. As more people started to learn about us we had more and more people volunteering to help. Some of them were good people, who are with us to this day, but others were nutters. We had a very well-off guy who wanted to bring in processes and organise everything, and I wasn't sure he was a good fit. We had another man, not dissimilar to Jacques the Legionnaire, who seriously proposed we set up a ‘Star Chamber' where we would collect information on paedophiles and then track down and assassinate them. The organiser was allowed to drift away and we said goodbye to the would-be hit man as well, which was a shame in a way as he was highly motivated and a ‘doer', and we've subsequently found that people like that are scarce in the community.

A few people I knew from the commandos drifted in and out of the organisation. A big supporter of ours was Corporal Vanessa Machin. Females couldn't qualify for the green beret when I was in the unit, but if ever there was a woman who could have served on the frontline with Special Forces it was Vanessa. We'd first met many years back, but we hadn't got off to a good start and I was quite intimidated by her for a while. Not long after I'd transferred to 1st Commando Company intelligence cell back in 1990 I drew an M16 assault rifle out of the armoury to practise with. I'd never actually trained on the M16 but as I was in the intelligence cell and no one paid much attention to me I thought I'd have a go with the American-made rifle. After the practice session I handed it in to the armoury, where Vanessa was working. As I was walking out of the vault-like room I heard a voice scream: ‘Who left the bolt in this weapon?' I looked back and saw the fierce-faced non-commissioned officer was holding up my M16. ‘Ummm . . . that would be me, corp.' I didn't even know it had a bolt that had to be removed.

Vanessa gave me a verbal thrashing and I remember thinking I'd give her a wide berth from then on. Later, I went on an army driver's course and she was on the course as well. She was hilarious and we became good friends and have stayed so ever since. She's given us a lot of moral support and acted as a useful contact between The Grey Man and the military. Her former boyfriend Murray Frean, another commando, also became a good friend and supporter. Vanessa later married a US Marine Corps master sergeant named Bill, and moved to Hawaii. While I wished her every happiness, her move was The Grey Man's loss.

Our first priority as an organisation was to raise some money. The rescues themselves don't usually cost us a lot of money, as volunteers pay for their own airfares and expenses, but we do need money for the preventative programs that we set up in the hill tribe villages. In 2008, our first year of operation as The Grey Man, we held our first fundraiser, at a Thai restaurant in Brisbane. Most of the people who attended were friends of mine or Russell's, but in time our support base began to grow, by word of mouth and through Russell and me talking at more and more Rotary clubs. At that first dinner we charged a bit on top of the meal, plus we auctioned off some craftwork and other items donated by local businesses, including a box seat at the Gabba in Brisbane for six people. We raised $3000, and while that probably doesn't sound like a lot compared to what other charities raise, it was more than enough to keep ten poor kids at school and out of the hands of traffickers for a year.

Russell hadn't been to Thailand, so we decided he should go up to see for himself the work I'd been doing on the rescue front and in the villages. We flew to Chiang Mai via Bangkok and as soon as I stepped off the plane I felt as though I was coming home again. It was a combination of the heady smells – good and bad – of Asia, the welcoming smiles of the people, and the knowledge that there was still work to be done. Or so I thought.

Things had changed in Chiang Mai in the eighteen months since I'd been back in Australia. I took Russell to the red-light district of Santi Tam but was surprised to see how quiet the area had become. Brothels that had boasted wall-to-wall girls were shut down, or largely empty. We went to a couple of places that I suspected of offering underage girls, but found none there. It turned out that on my first trip I was catching the tail end of the overt trade in the north of the country. Since then there had been a crackdown and the illegal business had been driven further underground. However, it hadn't disappeared completely – rather, it had changed its face. What we did find were pimps and karaoke bars where Russell and I were shown a series of photos of girls who could be delivered to our hotel rooms. I still couldn't get a lead on any underage kids, though.

‘Great,' I said to Russell only half jokingly, ‘we've set up a charity and raised money to help underage kids stuck in the sex industry and there aren't any left!'

Any illusion we might have had that the problem had disappeared was shattered when we went to Chiang Saen in Chiang Rai province to visit a shelter for trafficked and abused kids run by a gutsy woman called Kru Nam. When the problem of child prostitution was more high profile she just used to walk into brothels and simply drag the kids out; as a result, she had received numerous death threats. When we got there we found the shelter packed almost to overflowing with about eighty kids. She also had a shelter in Chiang Rai

‘This problem is still very much with us,' Kru Nam explained to us as we walked through the kids' dormitories. A small girl was walking with her, holding her hand. ‘About 40 per cent of the children here were trafficked by their parents to earn money as beggars; about 30 per cent were rescued or escaped from brothels, and about 30 per cent were abused within their own families. In many cases the parents are high on
ya ba.
'

‘There's no sign that things are getting better?' Russell asked.

She shook her head. ‘We take in more and more children until we can take no more.' It seemed that rather than disappearing or being cleaned up, the problems of child trafficking and abuse had simply moved underground. The young, shy girl holding Kru Nam's hand had been trafficked for sex and then rescued. She rarely talked, but would sometimes smile at us. Clearly, it would take time for her to heal.

Travelling with someone for an extended period is the best way to get to know them and, if you're not compatible, the best way to piss each other off. I hardly knew Russell at all when I agreed to take him to Thailand on a two-week trip, but fortunately I soon found that he was a very easy person to travel with. He's organised but easygoing, and he's got a good sense of humour – a prerequisite to work on our team. A good fit for The Grey Man – and this was why I knew Russell was the right man for the job from the start – is the sort of person who has some life experience, who can be flexible and maintain their sense of humour in the face of everything from almost unspeakable evil through to petty interjurisdictional bureaucracy.

Over the years since we formed the charity we've had quite a few very serious, very earnest people try to volunteer. While I want people who are committed to fulfilling our mission, I don't want crusaders. What I didn't want in The Grey Man were the types of zealots I'd seen working in organisations such as IJM; these people, who often saw Jesus and the Bible as the only and highest authorities, and were intolerant of other belief systems, were unable to see the shades of grey in human actions. They approached the problem of child trafficking and prostitution as though they were on a mission to stamp out the sex industry altogether. The Grey Man is not anti-prostitution between consenting adults, but nor do we necessarily support it. We simply accept that it has always existed and will always exist, but it is not acceptable for children to be dragged into that world. Zealots cause problems because they tend to be inflexible, and it can be dangerous if you're trying to run a covert operation and someone starts acting like a medieval crusader who thinks he has God on his side. Plus a person who espouses strong religious beliefs and wants to convert the world is not going to do a good job working undercover as a paedophile, or hanging around girly bars in south-east Asia trying to pick up information on offenders and underage kids while keeping a low profile. If I was the praying kind I would pray, ‘Jesus, protect me from your followers', but that lumps them all together and we have worked with many wonderful Christian people over the years.

The New Life Center in Chiang Mai, for example, is a Christian organisation, but their focus is on educating kids and getting them vocational training rather than on converting them. If the girls want to get involved with Christianity they can, but there is no pressure to do so. Another of our friends is Father Shay Cullen in the Philippines, who does great work. At the other end of the spectrum, I checked out the literature from a shelter run by westerners and their brochure on their work with rescued kids proudly opened with:
Praise the Lord
–
100 per cent of the children in our care have converted to Christianity.
I walked out of that place straightaway, as there was no mistaking their agenda. On one hand, I could concede it was better for a kid to be in a Christian refuge being pressured to convert rather than being stuck in a brothel giving oral sex to men, but on the other hand, that sort of environment represents another (albeit much milder) form of abuse because it operates from an assumption of cultural superiority. As there was a spectrum of Christian groups available, we always worked with the ones that truly embodied Jesus' teachings, as opposed to the fundamentalist organisations. I was only going to hand over rescued kids to a Christian-run shelter or organisation if I could be sure they would be safe there, and if I could satisfy myself that the girls' personal beliefs would be respected and not subverted.

Having learned that the problems of child trafficking and abuse had been pushed underground and further north into the border regions, Russell and I travelled to Mae Sai, where we met Sompop Jantraka, a Thai guy who has been working with abused and trafficked kids since the late 1980s.

Sompop ran an organisation called the Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities (DEPDC). They would go into villages and get girls into education before they were trafficked. They also provided free education and support for girls who had been sexually abused, trafficked and sold into prostitution. The ‘daughters' that Sompop and his people look after came primarily from the hill tribe areas, where we'd been working, but also include kids who have been trafficked from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and even as far afield as Yunnan province in China.

Sompop gave us a presentation first, and it covered many of the things that we, too, were involved in or wanted to get into, such as prevention programs and education; however, Sompop's organisation was not involved in actual rescue work. It was immediately clear to me that we could dovetail nicely with Sompop's work, but we were outsiders and Sompop had a long and proud tradition of success in Thailand, as evidenced by a good deal of favourable media coverage that formed part of his presentation.

After I'd given him our fledgling PowerPoint presentation, and stressed our track record in undercover operations and rescues, I said to him, ‘There's one thing I do want to make clear. If we are to work with you, The Grey Man does not want any public recognition here in Thailand for our work. Your organisation and the police can take the credit for any rescues we do.'

Sompop blinked a couple of times and waited a moment before speaking. ‘So, you don't want
anything?'

‘All we want is to rescue kids,' Russell said.

Whether one likes it or not, publicity, I have since learned, is an integral ingredient in the recipe for success for any NGO. Organisations fight – sometimes against each other – for column centimetres in newspapers and airtime on radio and TV to highlight their work and thereby engender support and generate fundraising. Sompop couldn't believe that we didn't want to be part of that.