We were approached by Adrian Trout of the Big Heart Project last week when children at their shelter in Cambodia were removed by their father. The father had been unable to properly care for the kids and had signed an agreement to allow the child to be looked after by Adrian’s group and educated.
Unfortunately, the father recently remarried and his new wife had a history of abusing children. She had already tried to kill her own 5 year old son who had been taken in to protection. The father had brought some of the children home to be looked after by the wife!! and took the two older girls (11 and 14) to work in a brick factory where they were working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. The younger children were becoming undernourished at home due to the lack of care by the stepmother and none of them were happy.
Adrian told me that he couldn’t get anyone in Cambodia to do anything about it. A complaint we hear far too often. So a couple of phone calls later and Tony, our Cambodian head of operations and Vichetr Uon from the Sao Sary foundation were on the case.
Adrian flew in to meet them and the result was that the older girls were found and removed to the Sao Sary Foundation under Vichetr’s care and a day later the rest of the children were removed from the house. The father has agreed to allow the children to receive an education and they are now safe and happy.
The two girls on the left in the photo below were the one rescued from the Brick Factory. Our Grey Man operative is next to them. A total of eight kids were rescued and put into protection. This is more of a soft rescue compared to our usual operations involving the police but we are happy with the outcome and so are the kids. Our thanks to Adrian from BigHeartProject for alerting us to the problem and Vichetr and Tony for getting the girls out.
