A controversial NGO that stirred up unwanted publicity last month is now working in Sihanoukville and, according to one of its founders, closing in on its first child sex abuse suspect.
Global-Protect All Children, headed by New Zealanders Jack Sanders and Gerald Thorns, claimed last month to be targeting pedophiles in Cambodia when it made public donations of audio equipment to the national police.
But the group’s anonymity among established child advocacy groups, aroused suspicion in the NGO community. Several Global-PAC members also bore publicized links to a diplomatic scandal in the Pacific nation of Nauru last year, whose leaders called Sanders a spy and international scam artist.
Sanders and Thorns wrote by e-mail two weeks ago that media attention had jeopardized surveillance efforts and caused them to temporarily retreat from Cam-bodia. But eyewitnesses in Sihanoukville said they have seen or met Thorns over the last week.
Last week Sanders confirmed Global-PAC was working in Cambodia, tracking its first suspect. He also wrote that the group’s noisy entry in Cambodia had only helped roust critics whom he called “the big boys of the child exploitation business.”
“We arrived with a splash and that’s OK because when you throw a stone into a pack of wolves and you hear a yelp, you know you have hit something,” Sanders wrote Friday, reportedly from Toronto.
Yet Global-PAC’s liaison in the Interior Ministry said Monday he could not recall when he last heard from Sanders or Thorns.
Thong Lim, deputy director of the central justice police department, said he didn’t know whether Global-PAC was in Cam-bodia. An assistant for Un Sokun-thea, head of the ministry’s anti-trafficking unit, said he believed the group was not in the country.
