Residential Schools > Hundreds of Millions of Dollars disappear in hunt for children's bodies - none found yet

 

Kamloops... $8 million spent, no bodies and no proof of an outrageous blood libel

Writer Brian Giesbrecht questions how $8 million of taxpayer money could be spent by the Kamloops band, and not either prove their claims of murdered children in unmarked graves, or withdraw it. Western Standard files

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired provincial court judge in Manitoba.

Western Standard Guest Columnist

Published on: 

11 May 2024, 9:30 am

They spent $8,000,000 without putting one shovel in the ground.

That’s how much money the Kamloops Band spent on… exactly what we have no idea. If you remember, that indigenous band claimed that the people running the local residential school had, for unexplained reasons, secretly buried 215 of the students under their care.

To back up that highly unlikely claim, they presented no evidence that would have stood up in any court in the western world. But the federal government immediately gave them $8,000,000 to... well, that’s the mystery. What did they spend that money on?

They have not put one shovel in the ground, but apparently they have somehow spent the $8,000,000 of taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

It was claimed that the money would be used to uncover the “heartbreaking truth”. But the only heartbreaking truth seems to be the complete waste of tax dollars.

But it gets worse. A whole lot worse.

Because the Trudeau government — in addition to lowering the flag for six months, and performing teddy bear pantomimes in community ceremonies — then went on to promise not just $8,000,000, but $320,000,000 to any other indigenous community that wanted to make similar claims. 

It should come as no surprise to any sentient being that dozens of poor indigenous communities immediately took the bait and claimed the prize.

So, the result is that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent somehow. But with no graves found. In fact, none have even put a spade in the ground.

Well, that’s not completely correct. The Pine Creek community in Manitoba was absolutely convinced that the stories about indigenous children dying under sinister circumstances, and being secretly buried under the local church, must be true. After all, they had all heard those stories.

But the stories weren’t true. Excavations went ahead, and what was found? Stones.

The stories about priest murders and secret burials are just that. Stories.

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars that should be spent on useful endeavours — like providing better health-care for indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians — are being wasted.

Rural paramedic services are being constantly cut back, for example. How many rural residents — indigenous as well as non-indigenous — will die from heart attacks because the paramedics were simply too far away from them to get them to the hospital in time to save their lives?

There’s no money to improve rural medical services because millions are being wasted searching for phantom “missing children” and “unmarked graves”? 

Canadians are beginning to wake up to the fact that they have been had. Somebody is getting rich on all of this government largesse.

But it’s not poor indigenous Canadians. They remain stuck on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder. And medical and other essential services go wanting, because of this complete waste.

So, are there people in “unmarked graves”? 

Absolutely. Billions of them in fact. This planet is basically one huge graveyard. The number of marked graves, with headstones naming the person interred, is a tiny fraction of the billions of people who have died on this planet. 

Are the remains of some of the children who died from disease while attending residential school in unmarked graves?

Absolutely. For that matter, so are the remains of many of the children who attended day schools, or no school at all in unmarked graves. There is nothing sinister about this fact of life. It simply means that the families of those children did not keep up the graves and cemeteries where the children were interred. (The vast majority of children who died while enrolled in residential schools are buried on their home reserves.)

This is not a criticism of those families. In fact, some of those families might have died out, and cemetery upkeep became impossible. Others just had different priorities.

So, what we have is just a sad fact of life. Many children died of diseases a hundred plus years ago who would not have died today. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing. And indigenous children died in much greater numbers, for many different reasons. Tuberculosis, in particular, was a major killer of indigenous people.

In fact, tuberculosis is still 290 times higher in the indigenous community than in the mainstream community.

But the fact that death from disease was so much higher in the indigenous community than in the non-indigenous community has nothing to do with residential schools. It has nothing to do with the people running the schools, many of whom devoted their lives to working with indigenous people.

So, we come around to the question —why is $320,000,000 being spent to find the long lost burial places of children, simply because their families decided — for reasons of their own — to not keep up their gravesites?

Because it is not true that there are thousands of “missing children” as alleged. Rather, as Professor Tom Flanagan puts it, in “Grave Error”, there are thousands of “forgotten children.” [Watch here.]

And as the special interlocutor, Kimberley Murray puts it, “These children are not missing, they are buried in local cemeteries.”

Perhaps that’s the reason that Murray’s upcoming National Gathering on Unmarked Burials has been postponed. Because there is nothing to say.

Her six-figure salary, and those of all of her staff and associates, to say nothing of the $320,000,000 that has been spent — somehow — on searching for phantom graves and phantom “missing children,” could have been better spent on the real needs of living children.

We are approaching the three year anniversary of the Kamloops claim that 215 children from the local residential school had been somehow killed and secretly buried in the apple orchard on the school grounds.

There was no good reason to believe that highly improbable claim in the first place.

It was only the foolish and emotional reaction of the Trudeau government, and the incompetence of the media that persuaded Canadians that they should take that nonsensical claim seriously in the first place.

It is time to get back to sanity. Treat those who claim — with no real evidence — that priests murdered and secretly buried children, exactly the same way that we treat those who claim that the Martians have landed, or that aliens have abducted their mothers. 

Be polite. But don’t finance their delusions.

Islam - Europe > Very Religious Muslim Rapes Woman in France; Germany allows polygamy for Afghan migrants

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France: ‘Very religious’ Muslim migrant rapes woman

in the middle of the street

SEP 6, 2023 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Why does this keep happening? We see Muslim migrants involved in this kind of story on a not-infrequent basis. Why? One reason may be because such treatment of infidel women is sanctioned in the Qur’an.

==========================

A young woman raped in the middle of the street in Vendée, a suspect imprisoned

Translated from “Une jeune femme violée en pleine rue en Vendée, un suspect incarcéré,"

by Pauline Darrieus, Le Figaro, September 1, 2023:

The attack took place on the night of August 12 to 13, at the exit of a nightclub in La Roche-sur-Yon. This Wednesday, August 30, a 21-year-old man in an irregular situation was imprisoned.

On the night of August 12 to 13, a young woman was raped in the middle of the street at the exit of the Castel club nightclub, in a business area of La Roche-sur-Yon. As part of this investigation, a man was placed in pre-trial detention this Wednesday, August 30, confirms a judicial source at Le Figaro.

After the victim filed a complaint, a judicial investigation had been opened against X. The police investigators of La Roche-sur-Yon then quickly traced the trail of a suspect. The man was arrested in a hairdressing salon in the town on Monday August 28. The young man, aged 21, of Algerian nationality and in an irregular situation, was placed in police custody, confirms to Le Figaro a judicial source. He began by denying the charges against him.

Three different versions

But this Wednesday, August 30, before the investigating judge, the suspect changed his version and recognized “a consensual sexual relationship” with the victim. “Monsieur has an ambivalent position on the facts. This is the third version, we cannot say that he really recognizes”, confided the deputy prosecutor, Alice Leduc, to Ouest France.

The prosecution therefore requested his placement in pre-trial detention “due to his irregular situation on the territory, the penalty of criminal imprisonment incurred and his position in relation to the facts.”

False papers

The suspect admitted “circulating with false papers,” under two identities known to the police. His lawyer, Meriem Abkoui, made it clear that his client’s record “is blank for both identities”. In defense of this, she explains that her client “is very religious and was afraid that his brother would judge him for this relationship outside marriage”.

What kind of 'relationship' results in having sex in the middle of the street?

The indicted explained, before the examining magistrate, to be “out of the nightclub with the victim” and that they were “both alcoholic.” His lawyer asked that the man be placed under judicial control at his brother’s home, while the investigation is ongoing. A request refused by the magistrate.

“There are enough elements to consider that you are involved in the facts of which you are accused,” declared the magistrate. She also invoked the risk of “renewal of the facts given the operating mode used” and the disturbances to public order generated by the facts. The man was imprisoned in the La Roche-sur-Yon remand center.

Is Germany Wise to Allow Afghan Muslim Migrants

to Practice Polygamy?

SEP 6, 2023 2:00 PM BY HUGH FITZGERALD

Instead of making Muslim migrants conform to the laws of the advanced West, including its ban on polygamy, German officials have granted the requests by Muslim Afghan men to be allowed to bring with them to Germany two of their wives. Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on this surrender to Islamic mores, and the misogyny implicit in allowing a Muslim man to have plural wives when a Muslim woman can have only one husband, can be found here: “German government permits Afghan refugees to bring second wives to country despite polygamy laws,” by Thomas Brooke, Remix News, September 4, 2023:

Afghan nationals who worked with the German army during the military operation in the country have had requests to bring their second wives and children to Germany approved, a move that is posing complex legal problems.

The law banning polygamy has not changed. But some government officials, grateful to the Afghans who worked as interpreters for the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan, have granted the requests of these men — so far apparently just a few — to bring their two wives with them to Germany.

The German government may think it owes a debt to Afghans. But allowing them to come to Germany with two wives — disregarding, that is, the law outlawing polygamy — is not the way to repay that debt. It is enough that these Afghans will be allowed to settle in Germany and take advantage, with their large families, of all the benefits the generous German welfare state provides: free or subsidized housing, free medical care, free education, unemployment benefits, family allowances, and more. Allowing them to break a long-established principle of German family law should not be an additional benefit. Let the Afghan husbands choose which wife they wish to bring with them to Germany, and if they don’t want to make that choice, they should be helped to find refuge in another Muslim country, such as Pakistan, where polygamy is recognized.

Allowing Afghan refugees to bring two wives to enter Germany poses all kinds of problems. What if an Afghan, a former employee of the Bundeswehr who “saved the lives of German soldiers,” has three, or even four, wives and wants to bring them all with him? Should the German government allow it? If the government is now willing in principle to permit polygamy, on what basis can it allow that Afghan to bring in “two wives” but forbid another Afghan to bring in three or four? What would be the rationale? “Polygamy” is okay, but there have to be limits? And what about Muslim migrants from other countries — would they now be allowed to bring in plural wives, or even to marry several wives while living in Germany? Why should Afghans be favored over Syrians, or Iraqis?

And what of the effect on German families, as they see on the streets of their cities Muslim men followed by two or more Afghan women, wearing the full-length chador, with even the face covered, walking submissively behind their lord and master, and with an enormous gaggle of children in tow? Won’t such a sight be a shock to any sense of social cohesion, with such different rules applied to Muslims and non-Muslims, and also undermine the principle of the equality of the sexes? What effect would the spectacle of these polygamous families have on German women and girls? And might some German men begin to ponder why it is Muslim men can practice polygamy in Germany while they, in their own country, can not? Difficult questions.

Afghan employees of the Bundeswehr were granted visas to reside in Germany following the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and family reunification laws enabled the employees to bring their spouses and children with them.

However, the German newspaper Westfalenpost reported that in at least two known instances, subsequent reunification requests were approved to bring further spouses and children. This was confirmed by the local immigration office in the Hochsauerland district.

In one instance, the husband is living with one wife and three children while the second wife lives in a separate apartment nearby with another seven children.

German taxpayers are now paying for these exceedingly large Muslim families. The husband is very likely unemployed, or at best, has a low-paying menial job. He has two wives living in two separate apartments, paid for by he state. Both wives are full-time mothers who are also unemployed. There are a total of ten children. Think of the expense to maintain this family: the two apartments, the medical care, the education, the family allowances for food and clothing — all of these benefits for three adults and ten children. It adds up precipitously, to be paid by the German taxpayers.

Another husband is understood to be living with both his wives and nine shared children.

Most people in the advanced West limit their family size to one or two children, because of the expense of rearing a child. But these Afghans, with their exceedingly large families, obviously don’t worry. They have nine, ten, twelve children apiece, and they are bringing all of them to Germany; they may have a few more once in the country. And why not? The German Infidels will provide.

Polygamy has always been illegal in Germany. But now that bureaucrats handling immigrants have decided to accommodate the requests of some Afghans to bring their second wives, with their children, with them to Germany, will these requests spread, and more Afghans be given permission to bring their two wives with them?

This issue is something that could become more frequent after the federal government relaxed family reunification laws.

Germany issued an increased number of visas last year for the purpose of reuniting spouses of foreign nationals. A total of 71,129 visas were granted; Indians and Turks received the highest number of approved requests with 8,930 and 8,778 cases, respectively.

The figure could have been much higher had 13,607 people hoping to join their spouses not failed to pass the language requirement test.

Germany has bucked the recent European trend towards more restrictive immigration measures with its liberal coalition government instead opting to attract more migrant workers.

Does the “liberal” German government that wants to attract more migrant workers not realize that there is a very great difference between the Muslim economic migrants, who come not to work but to live for as long as they can on the dole, and other migrants who do, indeed, come to work? Not all migrants are going to contribute to the economy; some will become great financial burdens on the state, as we have seen happen with Muslim migrants throughout western Europe.

Monika Schnitzer, who heads the influential German government’s Council of Experts, told the Süddeutsche Zeitungin July that new arrivals didn’t even need to speak German as she called for mass immigration to hit 1.5 million a year.

Monika Schnitzer is a danger to the German state and society. She may be the head of the Council of Experts, but she is a fit-to-be-tied nitwit. She thinks it splendid that migrants don’t even have to speak — i.e. know — German, as was previously required of would-be migrants, which of course opens the door wide to even more migrants. And she wants mass immigration to increase to 1.5 million a year, more even than Angela Merkel’s record of 1 million immigrants allowed into Germany in 2015. How many of those 1.5 million migrants will be Muslim? In recent years,86% of those who were admitted to Germany as “refugees” (which is what economic migrants call themselves) have been Muslims. There is no reason to think that percentage will change; it might even rise now that the former requirement for migrants to know German has been jettisoned.

As the number of new arrivals rises, including large families under reunification laws, so too is the number of children receiving state benefits, which has hit a record high. A total of 888,218 foreign minors now receive state welfare benefits, a figure that has tripled in 13 years, with 303,962 minors receiving financial assistance in 2010.

More madness with this “reunification.” The Muslim men arrive first, claiming to be “refugees,” Then the German government allows for the “reunification of families.” That means they can bring in their wives, and children. Or, as of now, it may mean two wives, and their children. How many children? The Afghan women have a fertility rate of 4.72, so an Afghan man with two wives will have, on average, ten children. And Muslims worldwide have the highest fertility rate of any religious group: 2.9. Replacement level is 2.1. The average German family has 1.612 children. In twenty years, or thirty, what will Germany look like demographically? And overall in Europe, the fertility rate is even lower — 1.43. What will Europe, which now has tens of millions in its midst, look like demographically in twenty years, or thirty? That is, if nothing is done.

Let’s hope the Germans come to their senses. They must start by at once putting paid to this cockamamie scheme of allowing Afghan migrants to practice polygamy in Germany. And then, not only should the government reimpose its previous German language requirement for would-be immigrants, but also require a cultural literacy test, to gauge an applicant’s knowledge of Western civilization and German history without which he is unlikely to fit in. That test will include, of course, the history of Christianity, the Enlightenment, and the Holocaust — three subjects that make Muslims most uneasy, and that they find difficult to truthfully discuss. That’s too bad.

Wolves Among the Sheep > Haredi Teacher molested students; Malka Leifer's Rabbi stepdad arrested; Religious pervs in Indonesia

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Education director in Haredi city named as suspect

in child sex abuse case

Mordechai Be’eri accused of molesting several boys when he was a teacher

in Modiin Illit settlement some 13 years ago; court extends his detention

By TOI STAFF

23 January 2022, 6:26 pm  

Illustrative: A man suspected of sexual abuse at a court hearing in Jerusalem. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90)

Mordechai Be’eri, director of the education department in the municipality of the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad, was arrested last week over child sex abuse he allegedly committed against his students some 13 years ago, officials said Sunday.

The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court permitted the publication of Beeri’s identity, amid suspicions that he abused boys aged under 14 in an institute in the settlement of Modiin Illit, where he was a teacher.

A young ultra-Orthodox man recently filed a police complaint, saying he was 12 when Be’eri, now 70, molested him. Since police opened the investigation, they have uncovered several more allegations of abuse, the Ynet news site reported.

Police on Sunday called on other people who may have been abused to come forward and press charges.

Be’eri, originally ordered held by the court last Wednesday, had his remand extended by several more days.

“We are pleased that the police have apprehended the suspect. Every abuser should know that they can face justice, even many years later,” said a statement from Magen, an organization that aids victims of sexual abuse and is assisting the alleged victim.

Former Melbourne school headmaster Malka Leifer's stepfather

Rabbi Baruch Pinchas Leifer arrested in Israel over

child sex abuse allegations

NEWSDESK Tittle Press

JANUARY 22, 2022

 

Malka Leifer’s rabbi stepfather has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a child and teenager in Israel.

Baruch Pinchas Leifer, an influential and highly regarded rabbi who led the small Hasidic sect Chust, was arrested this week on historical sexual assault allegations, which he denies.

One of the rabbis’ alleged victims, a family member, claims the rabbi repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was 12, while a man alleges the rabbi committed sexual offenses against him when he was 18.

Two victims’ advocates close to the case verified Ms. Leifers’ relationship with the rabbi: Magen for Jewish Communities Shana Aaronson, executive director of the Israel-based sex abuse advocacy organization; and, VoiCSAs Manny Waks, the executive director of this organization, which fights child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community.

 

We hope some semblance of justice will prevail, Waks said.

Local media are reporting that the rabbi, who is in his 60s, vehemently denies the allegations against him and says it is a plot over a family dispute.

 

His daughter-in-law, Ms Leifer, a former principal of the Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, south-east Melbourne, is due to stand trial this year over allegations that she abused three of her students between 2004 and 2008.

Ms Leifer has pleaded not guilty to at least 70 charges, including rape.

If the truth were to come out, I wonder if we would find that the stepfather was responsible for Malka's perversion?

Push for tougher sentences in Indonesia sex assault cases

A slew of cases involving young girls and boys at Indonesian religiously-linked

schools has horrified parents

A group of parents hold a protest outside the Galilea Hosana School in Medan after a priest was accused of sexually assaulting some of the young girls attending the institution [Aisyah Llewellyn/Al Jazeera]

By Aisyah Llewellyn

Published On 22 Jan 2022

Medan, Indonesia – It is every parent’s worst nightmare.

As six distraught families looked on, the man accused of sexually assaulting their daughters was handed a 10-year prison sentence by the District Court in the city of Medan, Indonesia.

“Our children,” gasped one mother as she slumped in her chair, prompting fears she had fainted.

Benyamin Sitepu, a 37-year-old Christian priest who was also the principal of the Galilea Hosana School in Medan, had received five years less than the maximum 15-year sentence the prosecution had requested.

The presiding judge said he gave Sitepu a shorter sentence because the priest had apologised for his crimes and had previously signed a settlement agreement with two of the victims’ families.

Both the prosecution and Sitepu are appealing the sentence.

Reacting to the verdict, Andreas Harsono, a researcher at Human Rights Watch Indonesia, told Al Jazeera the sentence was too short, particularly given Sitepu’s age and Indonesia’s remission system under which most prisoners serve about two-thirds of their sentences.

If Sitepu is granted remission, he could end up serving only about seven years behind bars and be free well before he turns 50.

“If he gets remission, he will be a relatively young man when he is released and will still be a danger to children,” said Harsono, who added that the short prison sentence would only add to the victims’ trauma.

Ranto Sibarani, a human rights lawyer in Medan who represented the families, said they were disappointed that Sitepu had not received the maximum possible sentence and called for religious organisations to take more responsibility for crimes that happen in the institutions that they operate.

“If people commit crimes under the banner of the church, for example, then the church needs to apologise,” Sibarani told Al Jazeera.

“Religious leaders need to make public statements to say that they support the legal process in all sexual assault cases and that they support the victims’ rights to take legal action.”

The exterior of the Galilea Hosana school is a mix of pinks, blues, yellows and greens. The allegations against Sitepu came to light last year after a young girl told her grandmother she had been abused [Aisyah Llewellyn/Al Jazeera]

The junior school in Medan became the centre of a sexual assault scandal in March 2021 when six female students came forward after one told her grandparents she had been abused by the priest.

The girls, who were 13 at the time of the assaults, said Sitepu had locked them in his office under the guise of administering “special lessons”, such as ballet, and touched them inappropriately.

One of the students alleges that Sitepu took her to a local hotel, telling school staff that he was taking her to off-site karate lessons, where he sexually assaulted her and forced her to give him oral sex.

After the student came forward, she was made to take local police to the hotel and identify the room in which she was regularly assaulted – something which both Harsono and Sibarani criticised as further adding to her trauma.

Sibarani added that, in his opinion, judges in Indonesia are hesitant to convict religious leaders or hand them lengthy prison sentences because of historical ideas about respect for those in positions of perceived religious authority.

New punishment

It had been a difficult time in Indonesia in recent months with a number of disturbing child sex abuse cases making headlines across the country, many of which have involved religious institutions.

In the city of Bandung in West Java, the principal of a Muslim boarding school, 36-year-old Herry Wirawan, was arrested and accused of raping 13 of his female students and impregnating at least eight of them from 2016 onwards.

On January 11, the prosecutor in the case asked for the death penalty if Wirawan is found guilty.

Under Indonesian law, the maximum sentence in child sexual assault cases is usually 15 years, although judges may use their discretion when it comes to sentencing if a case is deemed to be particularly nefarious.

The prosecution also asked that Wirawan be chemically castrated under a new law signed by President Joko Widodo a year ago following the brutal gang rape of a female 14-year-old student in Bengkulu in 2016. The punishment has yet to be used.

On January 20, Lukas Lucky Ngalngola, known as “Brother Angelo”, a Catholic priest who ran an orphanage on the outskirts of Jakarta that was home to more than 40 children, was jailed for 14 years for sexually abusing the children under his care.

When handing down his judgement, the presiding judge, Ahmad Fadil, referenced the 47-year-old priest’s “despicable acts” and said his behaviour had been particularly shocking for “a clergyman who should have set a good example and who should have known that his actions were contrary to religious teachings”.

As the judge passed his sentence via video link due to the coronavirus pandemic, Ngalngola held his hands up in prayer.

“They feel like they are invincible, hiding behind their religion,” said Sibarani. “Who will stand up for the victims when the perpetrators are seen as respected members of the community?”

Ustadz Martono, a Muslim scholar and chairman of the United In Diversity Forum, told Al Jazeera that sexual assault cases that involve religious organisations or religious leaders in Indonesia are often handled internally for fear of bringing shame on the organisations the leaders represent.

“My wish is that these kinds of cases are processed in a much more open way,” he said. “They need to be transparently handled according to the law.”

Indonesian president Joko Widodo, dressed in a brown batik shirt, explains a point during a conversationLast year, President Widodo signed a new law allowing for the chemical castration of those convicted of sexually assaulting children. The courts have not yet used the sentence [File: Willy Kurniawan/Reuters]

Members of the Christian community also agree that more needs to be done, and that religious organisations speaking out publicly may help the authorities to be less reticent about making arrests and sending cases to trial.

“We support and appreciate the steps taken by the police and prosecutors in handling the Benyamin Sitepu case in Medan and punishing the perpetrator,” Alex Ramandey, deputy general secretary of the central leadership council of the Indonesian Christian Youth Movement (GAMKI), told Al Jazeera.

“Especially when the perpetrator is also a church figure who has embarrassed Christians.”

Ramandey adds that religious organisations should provide education to the parents of children under their care about how to recognise and report such cases and support those going through the legal process.

It is unclear how many cases of assault involving minors happen every year in Indonesia, as many cases are not reported to the authorities. According to the Indonesian Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK), 288 child victims applied for protection in 2021. Of that number, more than 65 percent were victims of sexual violence.

The Deputy Chairperson of LPSK, Edwin Partogi Pasaribu, said 25 victims experienced sexual violence in educational institutions. “We should respect people in line and their religious beliefs, but they also need to be judged by their actions,” said Martono.

“If people are going to break the law, then they shouldn’t be religious leaders. We shouldn’t be embarrassed into silence. Morally, we all have a responsibility and we need to acknowledge when these crimes happen and not cover them up.

“If we say nothing, we are complicit.”

Shocking Malaysia into Awareness of Child Sex Abuse

KUALA LUMPUR - Sexual child abuse, unfortunately, has been making headlines in Malaysia recently. In the UK, Richard Huckle, now known as Britain's worst paedophile was convicted and given life in prison for the abuse of at least 23 children in Malaysia and Cambodia. This shed light on an issue that many in the strictly religious and rather sheltered nation deny is a problem. 

More recently, Malaysian activist Syed Azmi exposed a prolific chat group created to discuss sex with children and to share child pornography. The 751 members of the group would take images of children off the web, often from social-media sites, and discuss what they would like to do with the children. 

Also recently, journalists at Star Media's R.AGE exposed the 'grooming' activities of predators.  A lack of awareness, and poor-to-no sex education in Malaysia, particularly among rural and more strictly religious communities, has been pointed out as a factor that makes Malaysian children particularly vulnerable to predators like Huckle.

A national campaign launching today, spearheaded by Alvin Teoh, ECD at NagaDDB, hopes to change that.

It's personal 

"My 9-year-old daughter was a victim of a paedophile teacher two years ago, but thankfully she escaped before any serious damage was done because she planned her escape as soon as he made his moves on her," Teoh shared. "Needless to say, that was the time I felt most broken. But the lesson for us was that my daughter was empowered with awareness, thanks to the efforts of my wife. That saved her."

Teoh pointed out that before the Huckle case made headlines, there was next to no reportage on the issue in Malaysia. "Even now many here see it as a White-man disease, ignoring the fact that there are countless locals who are predators. These predators draw power from ignorance, and so many have gotten away."

The first phase of Nursery Crimes, targets parents of very young children and is about getting this taboo and misunderstood topic into the spotlight, said Teoh. "We want people to talk about it and we want to drive the microsite to seek information and to seek advice and help via PS the Children, an NGO that is at the forefront of the battle against this abuse."

This stage of the campaign rides on the fact that children can't tell the difference between love and sexual abuse. Statistically, many of the crimes are committed by people they trust: neighbours, teachers, caretakers, even parents and grandparents. "This is tragic as well as shameful and is quietly swept under the carpet," commented Teoh.

The campaign features three films, one each in English, Malay and Chinese, each of which leads to a microsite that provides information on how to spot the signs of abuse, how to react to a case of child abuse and where to seek help. "Then, each visitor to the site is invited to be an advocate of this mission just by passing on the knowledge by sharing information from the microsite."

Two years in the making 

It took Teoh two years to get this campaign off the ground, because when the idea was first proposed, it made the social workers that he consulted uncomfortable.  "They were afraid that children would not understand and would start to sing these nursery rhymes we had rewritten," he said. "So we put it on hold, out of respect. But after a year of waiting, these stories started to come out and we went ahead. But we did remember their advice and the videos will be online, and if it's on air, it will be in a timebelt where children are unlikely to be watching."

The videos are extremely difficult to watch. The appropriation of beloved nursery rhymes is shocking, and there is a genuine creeping sense of dread for the child in the video. "When we were casting, we had quite a few parents pull their children out when they read the script," Teoh said. "However in the end, we found parents who understood and were fully on board with the project."

Need to shock

Teoh believes that there is a need to shock, and that greater awareness and education on the issue outweighed the negatives. "It's controversial and straightforward," he said. "We knew we couldn't hold back on shocking people, and we didn't want to be too clever about it. People are meant to be angry, to be in denial. Any response is a good response."

    In Chinese with Malay subtitles

Teoh and his team donated their work to the project pro-bono, along with the production and audio houses involved. "When they heard what we wanted to do, they were keen to work on it free of charge," he said. But Teoh was firm that the project needed the full support of a legitimate NGO. "We could have carried the project, but we don't have all the necessary knowledge," he said. "We need experts, people working in the field to advise us. We 're not social activists, we're ad-agency people.

Sometimes intentions might be good, but you can cause a lot of damage because of ignorance. Someone's misery and pain is not a subject matter for award wins." PS the Children, said Teoh, was happy to work with NagaDDB on the project and is at the forefront of working with abused kids in Malaysia. "They have given us their full support."

More to do 

The campaign will air in TGV Cinemas, which has donated screen time to the campaign. Audio versions will be broadcast on Astro Radio, which has likewise given free air time to the project. "We're also in discussions with Astro to see how we can bring this topic to life via their talk shows," said Teoh.

"The media, publishers and key opinion leaders are also lending their support to amplify the project." This is only phase one, and there is much more to do, concluded Teoh. "There's cyber-stalking, the empowerment of survivors of child sex abuse and even child brides. Malaysians need to have proper conversations around these topics."

So do a lot of countries. God bless this project and use it to save many children from this sickening abuse.