The Grey Man (19 page)

I went back to the studio and met Richard just before the show started. We had a brief chat which confirmed that the time I'd spent with his researcher hadn't been wasted. Once we were on air I found myself relaxing, as it was clear Richard knew just the right questions to ask to elicit the details of my early life, my time in the army and how I'd ended up in Thailand and set up The Grey Man. I talked him through some of my experiences in Thailand and how they had turned my life around. It was all going really well, I thought.

‘How do you handle it, emotionally?' Richard asked me.

It was a question I hadn't been expecting. I paused a few seconds – probably not a good thing to do on a radio program, but Richard let the silence hang there. I'd been fairly matter-of-fact up until that point, but I suddenly felt the emotions well up inside me and start to overcome me.

I swallowed and felt my throat constricting. The beginnings of tears pricked at my eyes. For God's sake, get over it, I told myself. It was like a repeat of my embarrassing performance at that first Rotary meeting. I hated showing that weakness, but when I think about it now, I realise I must have been bottling up a hell of a lot of stuff. I didn't – couldn't – let myself dwell on the emotional side of what had been happening to those kids, let alone the physical damage that had been done to them.

It has been almost seven years since I first went to Thailand and it still happens, even today. I gave a talk to a ladies' group at a church recently and got choked up again. I thought, why is this still happening to you? I think sometimes I hide from the enormity of it all – not of what I've done, but the scale of the problem and the knowledge that I could do this for the rest of my life and the evil would continue.

Richard broke the on-air silence. ‘What happens to these kids is such a hard thing to accept. Does it trouble you, John? Does it drive you?'

I took a breath to steady myself. ‘I try to maintain a certain amount of dissociation from it because, I think if I didn't I'd be . . .' The emotions welled up inside me and I fought to keep them in check.

Richard jumped back in to save me. ‘You'd be upset all the time, probably . . .'

I stifled a sob and Richard steered the interview back onto safer ground and asked me about how my daughter felt about what I did.

At the time of the radio interview Misao and I were still getting to know each other, and I still hadn't told her anything at all about The Grey Man. I'd told her I was going to be on the radio, and I'd decided that that was how I would break the news to her about my other life. When she listened to it, she finally understood what was taking up so much of my time.

On that day Misao donated $1400 to the charity. I was so impressed with her, but I knew she was a student and I tried to give the money back. She said, ‘I'm not giving the money to you but to The Grey Man.'

I was so busy that we couldn't see each other very often, even though we were only five minutes away by car. She told me she'd taped the interview and used to play it at night until she fell asleep – she said she did this because she missed the sound of my voice.

Overall, the interview with Richard was painless, but the aftermath was overwhelming, in a good way. I probably received close to two hundred emails through our fledgling website as a result of being on
The Conversation Hour.
I spent the next two weeks answering and going back and forth with many of the correspondents. People were pledging money and sending donations, so I also had to write receipts and send thank-you notes. I was working full time as well and so I was getting very little sleep. I couldn't really complain, though – The Grey Man received $8000 in donations as a direct result of the exposure the ABC radio interview had given us.

We also had plenty of people wanting to volunteer to join the organisation, which was good, as well as a few people with interesting stories. One guy who contacted Russell told him that he had been sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a child, and that he was angry at the local bishop for not taking action in his case. The guy in question was interested in my military background and asked Russell if we would help him assassinate the bishop. He wanted to blow the clergyman up, and thought we could help him rig up the explosives. Russell had to politely decline. I thought about contacting the bishop, but on balance decided that he was probably safe for the time being as the guy had held his grudge for decades and still hadn't made good his threat. I hope the bishop appreciates this.

TEN

Back to Thailand, Hunting Paedophiles

A few months after the Richard Fidler radio interview, Claire Forster from the ABC TV documentary program
Australian Story
contacted me and said they were interested in doing a story on The Grey Man.

I was a bit iffy about it, because I was trying to put the lid back on our media coverage. The publicity was making us more visible and had added substantially to the organisation's funds, but it had also significantly added to my workload. I was busy for weeks after the Fidler interview, responding to queries on the internet until one or two in the morning each evening, and conducting follow-up interviews. Claire, however, can be a very persuasive person. Not long before she contacted me I'd seen an episode of the show about a Vietnam veteran known as Bomber who had set up an NGO to clear landmines in Cambodia. Claire said to me that after that documentary had gone to air those guys had received donations of about $30,000. It was an appealing scenario for a small charity, and The Grey Man could do a lot with that kind of money. We had a full-time employee (although luckily he was costing us a third of an average Australian wage), and a raft of community projects in need of ongoing funding in Thailand, plus I was interested in branching out into other countries, such as Cambodia, Malaysia, Laos, and Burma.

In an ideal world, if I was independently wealthy – a dot.com billionaire or something like that – I would have funded The Grey Man all by myself and been beholden to no one. However, there was no sign of that happening on my public servant's wage, and so far Bill Gates didn't seem to have noticed us. In fact, I had personally funded all operations from late 2004 until the end of 2007. With some trepidation I said yes to Claire, probably without realising fully what I was getting into. There was a hell of a lot of research and background that the film crew needed to make a thirty-minute documentary, and it didn't seem like they would be happy just to focus on Thailand and The Grey Man. They wanted to enter my life.

For a long time I was skirting around what Claire said could be a stumbling block in the documentary going to air: I'd told her that I did not want to be identified on camera. I was happy to give interviews for the program, but I wanted to do so only on the condition that my face would be filmed in deep shade or pixellated. I didn't want Misao to be identified either as I was concerned that she, and perhaps even my daughter and Anna, would be at risk.

Misao and I were in the process of planning our wedding and
Australian Story
asked if they could film it. ‘Fine,' I said, ‘as long as you don't show our faces.' Claire wasn't happy about that, but eventually she agreed to my stipulations. However, I knew this would probably come to a head at some stage. My concept was that they would film the wedding and then I'd go through the video with them and knock out shots that showed us with our faces to camera. Claire offered to make the tapes available to me afterwards, so I also thought this would be a good way to get a professional video done of the wedding on the cheap! I'd spent so much of my own money on The Grey Man that we had decided to have a low-key wedding with just Misao and me and the witnesses, followed a couple of months later by a larger ceremony that turned into a picnic with all our friends and family.

We were married on 8 August 2008, in a simple ceremony among the roses in New Farm Park, with my friend James there as best man, accompanied by his partner Farina. Misao had her friend Nereza. Jan Wooley was the marriage celebrant. It was wonderful.

In early November Misao and I had our second, larger wedding for family and friends in the rotunda in the same park, and this was the production that
Australian Story
filmed. Emma and Misao get along really well and I was proud and pleased to have Emma as our flower girl at the service. Anna dropped Emma off for the wedding and wished Misao and me well. Anna, too, was in a new relationship with a good guy, whom she eventually married. The day was wonderful, and the ABC TV crew were very considerate during the wedding, and not too intrusive.

Claire became a good friend of ours. She had her own very strong ideas about how she wanted to do the story and in which direction she saw it headed. When it came time to do the interviews the crew came to our apartment, closed all the windows and curtains to block any outside noise, and set up their own lighting. It was stifling under the glare of the bright lights, made worse by the hot, humid Brisbane air. I found myself sweating, and Misao, who was also interviewed, was pretty nervous. Her English is good, but not fluent, and afterwards she said she didn't want
Australian Story
to use her interviews. Claire assured her that she'd done a good job and I agreed. Misao came across just as she is – committed, sensitive, and incredibly supportive, despite the fact that my work has put a strain on our relationship at times.

Claire was on at me to organise for them to film part of the show on location, in Thailand. This, to my surprise, was a big stretch for the ABC, as apparently their budget was quite tight. It was a big deal, Claire told me, for them to get funding to fly herself and the cameraman to Perth to cover a story, let alone Thailand. However, Claire told her producer that of all the stories they had filmed this was the one that she wanted to do most.

I also wanted to go back to Thailand, to carry on the work I'd begun, but this time I wanted to spend a year there. My plan was to take leave without pay from work, but Misao wasn't keen on the idea.

‘What do you think?' I asked her over coffee at the Three Monkeys, a café in West End that we used to go to when we were dating.

‘You know, you haven't actually asked me if I want to go to Thailand,' Misao said.

I realised she was right. It's the way I am. I'd told her about my plans, how I wanted a break from work, and how I wanted to immerse myself in the culture and find a place in Chiang Mai, but I had assumed she wouldn't want to go. ‘So, do you want to go to Thailand?'

‘Umm, yes,' she said. But I could tell she didn't mean it. She'd left Asia behind and was really enjoying her new life in Australia. Once she finished her studies she wanted to set up a beauty parlour in Brisbane. Going to live in the developing world, in a city in northern Thailand, hadn't been on her agenda at all.

Indeed, although we'd married in front of the TV cameras, for the first six months our marriage was anything but wedded bliss. It was the pits – a nightmare, in fact. Misao knew The Grey Man took up a lot of my time, but I don't think she fully appreciated just how much of a burden it was until she moved in with me. She loved me and just wanted to spend time with me, and I stayed up late replying to the endless emails. There were arguments and at one point I walked out, although I came back to her the next day. I knew my life was unfair on her, but I had turned my back on what I thought was my true calling when Anna was pregnant with Emma, and as much as I loved Misao I was not going to do that again. I believed in what I was doing, as much for my own sake and sanity as for the people I was trying to help.

When Misao became upset and angry with me it was like a storm cloud hanging over my head. I'm stubborn, and I'd continue with my work, but having her mad was almost as depressing as turning my back on my calling would have been. I knew she wasn't happy about the impending extended trip to Thailand, and she told me she still wasn't really sure about coming along, or about me going.

I'd thought getting a girlfriend/wife would be a fairly straightforward mission, but clearly I'd misjudged. The moodiness and the fights continued. She was as obstinate as I was and I knew one of us would have to give some ground. ‘All right,' I said to her one night after she'd again complained about me staying up late on the computer, ‘that's it. I'm not going to Thailand. I'll forget all about The Grey Man.'

‘NO!' She was furious. Although she wasn't keen on the trip, she hated the thought that I'd changed my mind because of the way she'd been carrying on.

‘Okay, okay!' I said, hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I'm going to Thailand. This is my purpose in life, Misao. If you still want to come, then come, but if you don't, then don't.'

‘Yes, okay, I will come with you,' she said, and we both ended up hugging each other and laughing.

Later, when we talked more about it, Misao said she thought going to Thailand with me was a fifty-fifty bet: it would either make our relationship rock solid, or it would tear us apart. I think part of the problem between Misao and me at the time was that she wanted a safe life, with me at home with her, while I wanted to be out in the field, doing something – still putting myself in harm's way. This even extended to our honeymoon. Because I'd had to go to Thailand on a fact-finding mission with Russell two weeks after our first wedding ceremony, we had not been able to get away for a honeymoon, except for two days at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. After our November wedding I decided to take Misao to Vietnam for a proper honeymoon, and I promised not to go looking for underage children to rescue.

I'd long been interested in going to Vietnam, as I had an interest in the country's history and Australia's military involvement during the war. Misao had also heard good stories about the country from friends who had travelled there. Unfortunately, Vietnam wasn't all it was cracked up to be, although to be fair I was probably filtering my experience of the place through the anger I was feeling about our relationship. It seemed to have adopted the worst of western capitalism and combined it with the worst of Russian communism. Everyone wanted money and no one actually wanted to give you anything back for it. Like service, for instance.

I just got madder and madder in Vietnam as time went on. It wasn't helped by our experience in Hanoi where a taxi driver took us to a hotel we'd booked. When we pulled up outside the place it didn't look like what we'd expected, although the name on the front was correct. I asked the driver if he was sure this was the right place and while we were talking a young guy bounded down the steps of the hotel and told us the place was overbooked. The young guy got in the cab and told us he would take us to two other hotels owned by the same people, where we were sure to get a room. It smelled fishy and I didn't like the way the guy kept trying to engage us in conversation. While I was watching the streets, Misao asked him to show us where the new hotel was on the map. It was miles away from the area we wanted to stay in. I pulled out my phone and, even though I didn't have reception, acted as though I was calling the police. The driver took us to our real hotel; once we got there, the young guy jumped out and, on the pretext of going to get his motor scooter, vanished forever. I later learned this hotel ‘switching' is a common scam in Vietnam.

I knew that there was a lot of trafficking of kids up near Sapa in north-west Vietnam, but I had promised Misao I wouldn't get involved in work on our honeymoon. It seemed like a wasted opportunity, but I stuck to my word.

I wasn't sleeping well in Vietnam, as it was difficult to avoid the constant noise of the cities. The lack of sleep added to the friction between Misao and me and things came to a head in Hoi An, a world-heritage-registered town that was well worth the visit. I had been feeling that Misao's desire for me to be safe was getting in the way of my need to explore, to fight, to take risks. I was starting to feel that being with Misao was going to turn me into a safe and boring person, just so she could feel secure. It was understandable from her viewpoint, as she had been looking for the right guy to spend the rest of her life with and had decided I was it.

We were walking along the street near the tailor section of Hoi An when I noticed three guys running shirtless along the street on the other side. I had a feeling there was going to be trouble. A group of four men came running around the corner in pursuit and caught up with the shirtless guys. A tussle broke out and the three men broke away again. There was a lot of shouting and we stopped to watch. I had a strange feeling of detachment. Adrenaline should have been kicking in, but I was calm and curious and drawn to it like a moth to a flame. There was an adventure here.

The three men ran into a packed open-fronted restaurant and the next second there were tables upturned and bottles being smashed. The patrons ran for their lives as the pursuing men ran into the restaurant and a fight broke out in earnest. The customers had spilled out onto the street outside, while the female owner and waitresses had fled to the kitchen area at the back. I told Misao to stay where she was and she grabbed my arm tightly. I peeled her fingers away, and said, ‘There are women still trapped inside. I'll be all right.' I crossed the street.

The shirtless men had managed to force their pursuers back outside and they had retreated for the moment. Two Vietnamese police turned up on a motorbike. They took one look at the situation and drove off – I hoped it was to get reinforcements.

At that point one of the shirtless men threw a bottle at me. I was still in this calm, detached mindset. To my eyes the bottle spun slowly through the air, so I easily twisted my body as it sailed past and smashed on the road. I started walking up the steps into the restaurant. The shirtless guys were drunk but they were also in survival mode and they were breathing fast. They had overturned some tables to form a sort of wall and they were each holding broken bottles as weapons. I walked up and started talking in a slow, relaxed manner. I knew they couldn't understand me but it was the tone that was important. I just dribbled on about how their behaviour was bad for business and bad for tourism and ‘look at how you have frightened all these people'.

Each of them was bloody from the brawl. I picked up a napkin from a table and walked up to the one who was bleeding the most, talking calmly the whole time. I ignored the broken bottle in his hand and started to wipe the blood away from his abdomen. ‘That's a bad gash. You'll need stitches,' I said as I continued to clean him. I was just stalling, waiting for the police to turn up in greater numbers. Once I had cleaned the man up, talking the whole time, the three of them were breathing almost normally, so I decided there wasn't much more I could do. The women had already escaped out the back way, so I walked out as well.