Aussie dad helps rescue child sex slaves as crime flourishes during COVID-19
Rob Simons, a once successful real estate agent and father of five from Queensland, helps free children kept in sex slavery. But it doesn’t always go to plan.
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Exclusive: He’s the Australian dad at the coal face of the war against sex trafficking.
The once-successful real estate agent is responsible for overseeing the rescue of close to 1000 underage girls, young women and kids, forced into the sex trade by poverty and desperation through NGO, Destiny Rescue
There’s a photo that haunts Rob Simons* – it’s of a Cambodian girl.
The teen stares down the barrel of the camera for an iPhone selfie, her tiny frame pushed into a sparkling busty red top, her hair styled and curled, her lips stained deep boysenberry.
But beneath the hair and makeup, she’s barely old enough to attend high school – definitely too young to order a drink, by Western standards.
And, at 13 years old, she’s already the property of a pimp.
The girl had been in contact with anti-child sex trafficking NGO Destiny Rescue and together they were hatching a plan to help her get out.
It’s always a delicate operation and the agents must free the girl without blowing their cover. But before they get the chance, she’s dead.
Her bruised and battered body is found in a backroom of a bar known to sexually exploited children.
Police later convict four men for her gang rape and murder.
“That’s one that really sticks with me,” Rob tells News Corp from his home in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
“It really impacted me really heavily for a long time, thinking what else could we have done? Is tonight the night when she’ll be beaten? Is tonight the night when she’ll catch a disease that could kill her? Is tonight the night that she could be murdered?
“Those things are very much in the forefront of our mind as we head out into the night looking for these girls, knowing that this could be our last chance to get them out.
“It’s always in the back of my mind: are we doing everything that we possibly can ‘cos sometimes you don’t get a second chance.”
The former real estate agent and father of five has been at the coalface of anti-human trafficking efforts for almost a decade – ditching his successful property business on the Sunshine Coast and relocating his family to Cambodia, and numerous other South-East Asian countries, to run rescue operations for Destiny Rescue.
Since its inception in 2011, the NGO lays claim to liberating 5200 children and young women from the global sex trade.
During his six-year tenure in Cambodia, Rob managed teams of “rescue agents” to free more than 400 victims over his tenure. He now oversees teams across the seven countries in which the not-for-profit operates.
The agents are tasked with uncovering perpetrators of child sex exploitation, often which involves pretending to be paedophiles themselves, sometimes even buying time with the child before secretly revealing their real identity to the victim and later helping co-ordinating their release with police.
In other instances, locals are employed to help infiltrate the criminal groups.
It’s dangerous work and doesn’t always go to plan – if a pimp becomes suspicious of an agent violence can quickly transpire. In other instances, perpetrators are tipped off and simply disappear, taking their victims with them.
“You do get accustomed to being in dangerous situations, you do look over your back a lot. We’ve had guys shot at, we’ve had people chased. I’ve been in situations where I’ve seen people swinging chains and coming at our guys and we’ve had to take off and get out of there, so there’s always the chance of physical danger,” says Rob.
“We work with the police closely in pretty much all the countries that we operate in and in those cases we would build a case and help the police gather evidence so they can move in and catch the bad guys and be able to help those girls escape from the horror they are in.”
It’s for this reason, Rob and most of the other rescue agents keep their real identity disguised from the public.
“To put bad guys in prison you don’t always get them there, so there’s no sense in us putting a target on our own backs.”
The work has never been more pertinent, with experts predicting the hidden crime is on the rise.
Pre-pandemic, a 2017 report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated there were 4.8 million victims of sex exploitation worldwide, approximately 1.2 million of which are children.
While the current number of victims is unknown, a recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ‘Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trafficking in Persons’ cites the economic downturn resulting from COVID-19 has made those vulnerable to the crime even more so, as struggling families look for ways to survive, and perpetrators adapt to the “new normal”, where lockdowns and social isolation allow the already hidden crime to be drive further underground.
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Furthermore, essential support services, which help to prevent victimisation and assist survivors create new lives are also more difficult to deliver under COVID-19 restrictions.
“It’s pretty much the same story, I can nearly write the script for each girl,” says Rob.
“If we ask them why are they working there, it’s pretty much they come from a poor family, they don’t have an education, don’t have any skills and there’s no other options out there and I can’t get a job. Or in some instances they’re tricked into it.”
In the most distressing instances, children as young as three are turned over to “temple prostitution” in parts of India, which sees them become sex slaves at the behest of any man in the village.
However harrowing, Rob believes the reward outweighs the challenges of his work.
“People think we live in a world of darkness but the reason we do this is because we get to bring these kids into the light – I’ve had the blessing of being able to see these girls who were working in these places and being subjected to these things actually go on to have great lives. And that’s worth it.”
*Last name changed to protect identity.