Fed: Former policeman fights to stop trafficking

AAP General News (Australia)
08-25-2006
Fed: Former policeman fights to stop trafficking

By Erin McWhirter, TV Writer

SYDNEY, Aug 25 AAP - A harrowing new television documentary exposes the evil of trafficking
children for prostitution and a life of slavery in Australia.

Screening on SBS next week, Trafficked follows former federal police officer Chris
Payne as he investigates and campaigns against a monstrous crime.

But despite the heartbreak and despair, he remains steadfastly optimistic.

"We need to do something because I think in Australia we can get rid of the trafficking,"

says Payne.

"It's a lot harder for the Thai people or Cambodians to do it, but I think we can ...

the bottom line of it is that it's slavery."

Payne, who headed Paper Tiger, a special operation aimed at combating sex trafficking
in the mid-1990s, left the police force in 1997 to start his own private investigation
company.

But for a decade, he continued to be haunted by the deportation of a 13-year-old Thai
girl called Ning after she was found in a Sydney brothel.

Looking for answers and resolution, Payne travelled to Thailand with a camera crew,
to hopefully track her down and discover how she first managed to get to Australia.

After nearly two weeks searching, Payne and director director Luigi Acquisto find her,
married with a child.

She was indeed alive, but far from okay.

The physical and mental wounds were all too evident - rotting teeth from drug abuse
and scars from several suicide attempts.

"If I think about the past I feel bad about myself," says a tearful Ning in the documentary.

Her father confesses that he had sent Ning away after losing his job.

He was promised $16,000 if she found work overseas as a maid or nanny, not a sex worker.

Once back in Thailand, stripped of her innocence, Ning continued prostituting herself
and soon turned to drugs.

"I was worried and depressed," she says.

"My friends gave me drugs and made me forget. I was homeless."

Still angry and resentful, Ning says her only comfort is her family and the fact that
those who sent her to Australia are now behind bars in Thailand.

"They lied for money and left me to suffer over there (in Australia)," she said.

"Serves them right, they are in prison now."

The trafficking of women and children for prostitution is a global problem.

The United Nations estimates that more than one million children worldwide are forced
into sexual slavery each year.

Acquisto and Payne also visit the parents of Phuongtong (Noi) Simpalee, a Thai sex
slave whose death in 2001 in Sydney's Villawood detention centre made headlines.

Her parents insist they didn't sell their daughter to traffickers, they thought she
was working with friends in an Australian restaurant.

"We didn't want this story perceived as being an Asian problem that sometimes comes
to Australia," Acquisto said.

"Chris is such a central part of the story, it grounds it as an Australian story and
Australia's problem.

"Lots of woman and children from Asia and Europe end-up in Australia being enslaved
in brothels. This slavery has to stop."

* Trafficked screens on August 31 on SBS at 8.30pm (AEST)

AAP em/it/bwl

KEYWORD: TRAFFICKED (FILE PIX AVAILABLE)

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