The Grey Man has had a success.

[weemadando]

I heard about these guys on Australian Story last year and this is the first real coverage I've seen of them since. But given who they are and what their goals are, this is a charity that is definitely going on my list to support.

Australian charity rescues girls from trafficking
By Conor Duffy for AM
Posted Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:24pm AEDT
Updated Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:15am AEDT

A secretive Australia-based charity dedicated to hunting down sex traffickers has had a breakthrough in Cambodia.

The Grey Man organisation says it has rescued a 10-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl being held in an illegal brothel.

The discovery prompted Cambodian police to arrest two men and it is hoped the intelligence gained will help bust a major international sex trading syndicate.

The Grey Man organisation is a Brisbane-based charity made up mainly of former SAS soldiers and policemen. Its volunteers are used to dangerous assignments, but their work tracking down South East Asian paedophile rings and freeing young girls can get equally hazardous.

For six months The Grey Man has been trying to establish a presence in Cambodia, a notorious haven for sex offenders.

The group's president, a former SAS soldier who uses the pseudonym John Curtis, says one of his members stumbled on an illegal brothel while on a fact-finding mission in Cambodia.

"While he was there he's decided to do a bit of snooping around himself, spoken to a taxi driver, and that led to him being offered these girls for sex.

"He involved IJM (International Justice Mission) and the Cambodian police and we rescued the two Vietnamese girls."

The Grey Man is now helping to find a new home for the girls, who Mr Curtis says are in a terrible condition.

"What we find usually with rescued girls is that they have a lot of nutritional deficiencies for a start, because their diet is not very good, they're not treated very well, they just barely scrape by because they're not given much money or food.

"And over time of course they can develop sexually-transmitted diseases and they often end up in the end with AIDS and once they're too sick to work they'll usually be kicked out on the street and then they scrape by until they die."

Mr Curtis is hopeful that the arrest of the sex traffickers will provide information that may crack the syndicate.

"We're following up on a whole number of leads that came from the operation, and we're trying to track down other people who were involved in the trafficking of the girls and I think we've got a good chance of going somewhere with that.

"We did a similar thing on the Thai-Laos border last year and we ended up wrecking a trafficking ring that was trafficking about 120 girls a year across the border from Laos."

Mr Curtis says the volunteers' work has led to some unpleasant confrontations.

"Yes, there are Australians, we've met up with a number of them who are doing this type of thing and have tried to get evidence on them, but they're also Germans and Swiss and French and Americans and Canadians, it just goes on and on and on.

"They seem to be taking advantage of the lax laws and security or the lack of chance of being caught in South East Asia."

UNICEF estimates that as many as 1.2 million children may be trafficked for sex each year.

[Chris OFarrell]

Vigilantie work should always be discouraged in a perfect worrld, as all too often groups like this start out with a good idea...and start to slowly move down that slippery slope.

But in this case, I really can't help but salute these guys.

[Teebs]

Vigilantie work should always be discouraged in a perfect worrld, as all too often groups like this start out with a good idea...and start to slowly move down that slippery slope.

But in this case, I really can't help but salute these guys.

I'm not sure it is proper vigilante work in this case. It said that they investigated and found the sex traffickers and then involved the police, so it's probably more akin to private detectives or investigative journalists.

[tim31]

I hope you did not just place former members of 4RAR in the same league as investigative journalists.

Slippery slope indeed, but slavery is abominable and dehumanising children for financial gain is despicable. They went through proper authorities to get the job done, as Teebs pointed out. There isn't an internet tough guy out there that wouldn't have cheered them taking the building and marginalizing the slaveowners.

[Mr Bean]

For slavery of any kind I'm willing to look the other way. More to the point... most of the Grey men are either former law enforcement or part of the special services. Which makes them damn fine people in my book. More to the point it's not like they are loading up on guns and flashbangs and pulling the girls and boys out themselves. They are acting as recon forces, and considering the pedigree of most of their members, I'm more than happy to say Go Grey men. Keep on fighting the good fight.

[Teebs]

I hope you did not just place former members of 4RAR in the same league as investigative journalists.

Who said anything about leagues or quality of service? I was just pointing out that their activities are more like those of investigative journalists than vigilantes in that they go out and try to expose bad things rather than going out and trying to kill/punish the people doing bad things. Obviously they're not the same.

[tim31]

Flippant remark made in jest, Teebs. Please disregard.

[Tanasinn]

most of the Grey men are either former law enforcement or part of the special services. Which makes them damn fine people in my book.

Couldn't the same could be said of Blackwater/Xe mercenaries, though?

That aside, I don't think you'll find many more laudable causes than fighting sex slavers. Frankly, I feel that this is one of the cases where the slippery slope of vigilante justice isn't much of a slope at all.

[Lonestar]

Couldn't the same could be said of Blackwater/Xe mercenaries, though?

Not all of them. Not even a majority of them.

[Mr Bean]

most of the Grey men are either former law enforcement or part of the special services. Which makes them damn fine people in my book.

Couldn't the same could be said of Blackwater/Xe mercenaries, though? .

No, because Blackwater/Xe hired a particular kind of former service people. And it's founder is a Christian Reconstructist who belives we are fighting a Holy war. Most of the intial batch of former special forces folks they have left a long time ago. Current Blackwater/Xe employee's are more likely simply former service members of a particular "ahem" mindset. Well two really... those that have the same vision as it's founder, or those in it for the money. They pay very well.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think my dad once told me that former security guards from the Philippines even ended up working for Blackwater as grunts. I don't know how verifiable this is... but I think those British/Commonwealth guys are much more stringent with their recruitment requirements. For one, if you've got bad eyesight, you don't make the grade at all. Whereas in America, they let fucking convicts and mentally ill people get in.

[Tanasinn]

My point was that I don't find it necessarily wise to judge people positively based on their service alone, with the fact that Blackwater is replete scumbags. Perhaps that's nitpicking, but I still thought it worthwhile to bring up.

[Sarevok]

On top of being a third world wasteland Cambodia ranks as the 22nd most corrupt country in the world. Cambodias own law enforcement is quite dysfunctional. The Grey Men won't make a difference in the big picture but least they fighting for a good cause.

[Highlord Laan]

Theres a slippery slope here? They're pedos. who gives a fuck if they end up dead by the numbers? It's not like it's a loss, more akin to killing rats and other assorted forms of subhuman vermin.

[White Haven]

Until they get it wrong, at which point it becomes 'oh, I hated vigilantes all along.'

Note that this is not aimed at the Gray Man, but at Laan there.

[Edward Yee]

Not sure where you got 4RAR from, tim31; I understand that SASR is a separate unit from the former 4RAR (now 2nd Commando Regiment)?

Good shit either way, although this actually made me slightly more concerned about the state of US special operations forces going forward. Namely, I recall a MilitaryPhotos.net thread about a Discovery Channel on "Greet Beret" SFAS, and the resultant discussion over how it seemed like SOF has almost entirely moved over to direct action types, at the expense of damn near everything else, even the Army Special Forces. It's certainly the most public and nominally exciting thing SOF might do, but... let's just say that I hope that US SOF these days does (or will) look for the kind of people who might one day follow in John Curtis' footsteps.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Vigilantie work should always be discouraged in a perfect worrld, as all too often groups like this start out with a good idea...and start to slowly move down that slippery slope.

But in this case, I really can't help but salute these guys.

The idea that vigilantie justice is bad only applies in areas and cases where the law is effective, where there is an alternative to being a vigilantie. In a place like Cambodia or Thailand were the law enforcement is ineffective or corrupt, taking what is right into one's own hands can be the only option if you ever want to see justice done at all.

Even in western countries the law is ill-equipped to dealing with sex traffickers. Slavers are very good at making everything seem legit on the surface, having someone in the destination country who can help with getting documentation for the slaves etc. It is very difficult to deal with that. What investigators like this can do is gather the information that police need to get the job done, without having to deal with the procedural and legal hurdles that the slavers hide behind. In the US for example, the 4th amendment only applies when the individual doing the warrantless search is an agent of the state. I can search your house tomorrow and submit any evidence of a crime I find to the police and it would be perfectly legal IIRC. I would get charged with burglary... maybe... but the evidence I gather would not be legally tainted.

[[R_H]]

I think my dad once told me that former security guards from the Philippines even ended up working for Blackwater as grunts. I don't know how verifiable this is... but I think those British/Commonwealth guys are much more stringent with their recruitment requirements. For one, if you've got bad eyesight, you don't make the grade at all. Whereas in America, they let fucking convicts and mentally ill people get in.

Where did you hear that about ex-convicts and the mentally ill?

The grunts are also quite often from Uganda or Latin America, who usually just do static defence (Manning checkpoints).