Australia's Child Wise regrets Bali child abuse document
Australia's Child Wise regrets Bali child abuse document
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The head of Australia's leading child protection advocacy group
said she wished she had never made public a report on pedophiles
in Bali.
In a recent interview with Australia's The Age newspaper,
Child Wise director Bernadette McMenamin said her group's report
on pedophiles was a "working document" prepared by a postgraduate
student and not "an investigation".
"It's a whole collection of comments, we don't pretend it's
any more than that," she told The Age.
The document said that pedophile rings of Australians,
Americans and Europeans were operating largely undetected on
Bali.
The media, quoting Child Wise, reported that children on
Bali's streets had revealed networks of thousands of foreign men
preying on them, working together and sharing the children
Child Wise named half a dozen Bali bars where children are
allegedly available for sex, but the author did not mention
whether she personally visited these bars.
The document was released to some members of the media in
November and received no coverage at the time, apparently because
the allegations it contains are all unsubstantiated.
"There was no interest in it for obvious reasons," she said.
But the arrest of former Australian diplomat and suspected
pedophile William Stuart Brown prompted a flurry of stories
quoting the document alleging a big rise in pedophile activities
in Bali, especially involving Australians, she said.
She said she had no doubt that pedophiles operated in Bali,
but people should realize the problem was worse in many other
places in Asia.
"It's probably less of a problem there than in the rest of
Indonesia," she said.
Child Wise had just compiled the document with the intention
of convincing authorities to probe the allegations.
"We were not there to investigate ... I can't say we have
investigated the claims that were given to us," McMenamin said.
Child Wise jointly organized a meeting on the island last
month with the Indonesia's Office of the State Minister for
Culture and Tourism as part of its effort to fight sexual
exploitation of children, particularly in the tourist industry.
The meeting, which was attended by high-level tourism
officials and NGOs from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar,
Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, adopted a draft of the ASEAN
Traveler's Code (ATC).
The ATC urges travelers to "help prevent the abuse and
exploitation of people". It also states that "everyone has the
right to protection from exploitation and abuse".
Elizabeth O' Neill, the new press attache at the Australian
Embassy in Indonesia, told The Jakarta Post Australia had
introduced laws to combat child sex tourism.
Australian citizens and residents who engage in sexual
activity with children in foreign countries can be prosecuted in
Australia under Australia's Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Amendment
Act 1994, which provides for a prison term of up to 17 years and
fines of up to A$500,000.