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Source: ONE News -
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Going undercover to rescue child-sex slaves from southeast Asian brothels sounds like something out of thriller fiction, but not to a group of dedicated ex-soldiers and former police.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that as many as 1.2 million children are trafficked for sex every year.
The figure makes the 100-odd high-risk rescues of woman and child sex slaves by the Brisbane-based charity The Grey Man seem like a drop in the ocean.
But try telling that to the organisation's president and founder, who goes by the pseudonym of John Curtis.
"Some people come up with the argument that rescues don't do any good," the 50-year-old said.
"People say we should be developing policy and dealing with the causes of the problem.
"Well, how about you tell that to a 10-year-old girl in a brothel."
Curtis, a former Australian special forces commando, set up Grey Man in 2004 after watching his five-year-old daughter, who now lives with her mum, asleep one night.
"I was thinking that (bad) things were happening to kids her age in South-East Asia, so I decided to do something about it," he said.
By the end of 2004, Curtis had assembled a team and was preparing for the first mission into Thailand.
"We were nothing then - basically me and a few hangers on," he said.
The Grey Man now has a support base of between 1200 and 1400 people, a website, is listed as an incorporated charity, and has formed strong links with Rotary.
"We are aiming to have a pool of about 50 to 60 operatives. If we had 50 people who had skills, then we could send them all over the place," he said.
When Curtis says "people with skills" he means former police or ex-military - those with experience in high risk environments.
This is due to the dangerous places in which they sometimes operate, Curtis says, like a beach at the Thai-Laos border in March 2009.
"When we met the traffickers the first time they were carrying weapons, pistols," he said.
"The second meeting was where they were going to be arrested, so the Thai police authorised us to carry (pistols), which is very rare."
He attributes the strong rapport with the Thai authorities as a key factor in the group's success, and says he hopes to build an equally good relationship with Cambodian authorities, where the charity made its breakthrough arrest.
The group's director of operations - a former Sydney policeman who goes under the name Tony to protect his identity - was in Cambodia on a fact-finding tour when a motorbike driver offered to arrange some young girls for him.
The driver then took Tony to a hotel where a pimp showed him two Vietnamese girls, aged 14 and 10 - the youngest the charity has ever rescued.
"He (Tony) asked for both girls and on the pretext of going to an ATM to get the US$600 ($NZD845) to pay for them, he briefed police," Curtis said.
Police then accompanied The Grey Man director back to the room to arrest the pimp and the motorbike driver.
The girls, who'd been trafficked from Vietnam, have been placed in the care of a British aid agency.
Curtis says the charity also assists in supporting the children they save, as well as funding preventative schemes.
These include paying for the education of about 100 hill-tribe children, and also helping villages generate steady incomes so there is no need to sell their children.
The not-for-profit organisation has just three people on the payroll - a Thailand investigator, his assistant, and a part-time administration officer in Brisbane.
Otherwise, it relies on its army of volunteers and donations from the public.
Curtis had to sell his Brisbane unit last year just to keep funding the project.
And he's so deeply involved that shortly after his wedding, he ran off to Thailand "to sort some stuff out".
"She (his bride) couldn't believe it, it was meant to be our honeymoon," he said.
His new wife joined him on a subsequent mission.
"After spending three months in Thailand with me and going on raids with me, she loved it," he said.
Grey Man is a military term for a soldier who goes under the radar and blends into the surrounds.
