BEADS of salty sweat filter down Steve Morrish’s creased brow. It’s the dry season in Cambodia in 2008, and the ex-detective from Footscray is waiting uneasily in an old crimson Camry in Battambang, the country’s second-largest city.
He and a local police team are about to pounce on a brothel they suspect is using underage girls as sex slaves.
It transpires one owner of the brothel is a military police officer, the other a policeman working in the anti-human trafficking unit created to combat this type of crime.
Once freed, the 16 victims, most under 14, tell of a friend missing with her baby, fearing they may be dead.
After scouring the site, Morrish and local police find a tiny, shallow grave but suspect the mother is buried in dense jungle littered with landmines.
They never did find her body.
In 2007, Morrish set up South East Asia Investigations into Social and Humanitarian Activities (SISHA) as a registered Australian not-for-profit organisation to combat human trafficking, exploitation and oppression in Cambodia.
He was refused a year’s leave without pay from Victoria Police, but packed up his life and left for Phnom Penh anyway.
According to SISHA’s development director, Alexandra Hammer, the central goal of the organisation is to feed rule of law back into Cambodia.
SISHA works closely with local police in rescuing victims of human trafficking, bonded labour, rape and sexual assault, and then prosecutes offenders.
It provides victims with legal assistance, medical and vital aftercare services.
The team paid a fleeting visit to Melbourne this month to raise funds.
Morrish says just $1500 could free 16 victims from sex slavery.
Much of the problem, he says, is the lack of rule of law, exacerbated by corruption in some of Cambodia’s police force and government.
In 2009, SISHA started an eight-week intensive course for local police. Five hundred have now completed it.
Morrish has now been asked by the police to build a detective training program.
“For the first time in the police force, we’re creating a tier system that fosters ambition and creates competitiveness,” he says.
SISHA will need to raise about $200,000 to get the program off the ground.
“We’re making real, tangible change and this course could be the key.
“It could change the way the community views police, where only those who pass the most stringent criteria are allowed to investigate serious crime.”
Morrish says he’d like to have Victoria Police members seconded to him for workshops.
“I think 99 per cent of the police officers – that was me 10 years ago – in Victoria don’t have real insight into human trafficking or the dynamics of people working in brothels, and there are lots of them in Footscray.
“I’d love to have detectives come over to Cambodia for a month to see where it begins.”
Details: sisha.org or alex@sisha.org
