‘It’s not enough to just rescue victims’: The Australian taking on southeast Asia’s paedophile rings

THIS former policeman saw the reality of child trafficking when he was offered a five-year-old girl for sex. He couldn’t stand by.

SOUTHEAST Asia has no shortage of westerners fighting to free children from the sex trade, but few are willing or able to tackle the problem at its core, says one Australian man.

As a private investigator and former Victorian police officer, Glen Hulley’s passion to assist child trafficking victims began in 2013, after he was approached by a Cambodian trafficker and offered a young girl for sex.

“The man offered me a girl that must have been five years old. That night stuck with me,” he says.

At the time Glen was on holiday with his then girlfriend, and admits that he initially thought the offer was a scam. However, after doing some private investigation work Glen soon discovered the grim reality of child exploitation in southeast Asia.

On his return to Australia, the private investigator made the decision to sell everything he owned and move to southeast Asia to lend his skills to organisations fighting child sex trafficking.

Former Victorian police officer Glen Hulley’s passion is to assist child trafficking victims.

However, after moving to Cambodia and Jakarta to work with various organisations — who he says had the best of intentions — Glen began to grow increasingly frustrated; feeling there was a significant element no one was addressing.

“A lot of NGOs have realised that if they catch a couple of local Indonesian or Cambodian people, no one in the media in Australia is really going to care about that, so they focus on the easy target. It’s understandable, but to me, that doesn’t really solve the problem.”

“There are risks when it comes to going after locals, but it’s just too big to ignore.”

Two years on Glen is now the Founder of Project Karma, a “game changing” organisation that partners with police, governments, networks and other NGOs to bring travelling and local southeast Asian paedophiles to justice.

The focus of Project Karma, Glen says, is on those who facilitate the abuse of children — whether that be expats who travel overseas to groom children, or local organised crime networks — including women.

“It’s big money, and there are all types of local people committing these crimes, facilitating the network.

“It’s also quite regular (to see women involved). When we investigate cybersex networks, we often see a number of families get together and put their kids in front of these cameras,” he says sadly.

By establishing and training local investigation teams, Project Karma’s ultimate aim is to empower local police and investigation teams to become self-reliant, operating without the need for international aid.

Sharing about the investigations he’s implemented overseas, Glen says most Australians would be shocked to know of the scale at which children are trafficked on a daily basis.

Among some of the worst cases he’s investigated, Glen recalls the time he and his team discovered 15 children chained to the floor of a building in 2014. Held hostage in an old hotel, the children only left the building when being transported for ‘orders.’

“The kids were tied to the floor,” he says with disgust. “There were ratty old mattresses and mushy bowls of rice on the floor.”

On another occasion, Glen and his team discovered Filipino girls as young as eight years old being trafficked via boat from Cebu to Bohol.

“They were putting these girls in stowage boxes and sending them across on ferries,” he said. “The sort of boxes you usually put life jackets and tools into.”

Like many others who are working tirelessly to achieve social justice, Glen has had his fair share of criticism from people who believe Australians should be focusing on problems at home, rather than overseas.

“I get that (criticism) a lot,” he replies.

“(Truth is) in a lot of these closed communities we work in, women and girls don’t have the rights that we have in our western countries — they’re not treated as equals,” he says, explaining of his choice to fight child exploitation overseas.

“There’s also a market for boys, particularly in Cambodia, and there aren’t a lot of resources available to them. Often they end up in orphanages instead,” he says.

The private investigator admits that the horrors he has seen are often too much for many westerners to get their heads around, but he believes strongly that the only thing worse than these atrocities is to stand by and do nothing.

Currently operating in Indonesia and Thailand, Project Karma also hope to expand into Myanmar, India, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Vietnam once fundraising goals have been achieved.

Closer to home, Glen is also a firm believer that changes need to be made to the travel movements of registered sex offenders, who at present, are able to travel internationally with ease.

In 2015 it was revealed by the AFP that around 250 Australians with child sex convictions had travelled to the Philippines in the four years prior.

Glen explains that failure to revoke offenders’ passports also has a flow-on effect to children overseas, many of whom are exploited by offenders who fear no consequences.

“If you’re on a register, all you have to do is notify the police that you intend to travel … the police don’t even make a decision on it,” he says.

It was during his time in Jakarta that Glen saw for himself the failures of the system.

“There were emails that were three weeks old, completely unopened,” he says angrily.

“I said (to the police officer), ‘This person has probably come and gone from the country by now, and you don’t even know!’”

Glen believes that these failures come down to under-resourced authorities, who are simply too busy with daily crimes to keep up with the notifications of registered child sex offenders entering their country.

In the last year, Project Karma has been instrumental in the arrest of several western paedophiles who had travelled to Thailand to work with children.

One of the men, Australian paedophile Peter Walbran, had gained employment in a Thailand school, teaching science.

Despite Project Karma’s minimal budget, Glen felt it was something “too urgent to ignore,” and quickly set about gathering intelligence on the convicted paedophile; successfully having him arrested and removed from the school.

Glen pictured with members of the Royal Thai Police at the arrest of Australian paedophile Peter Walbran

Glen believes paedophiles should have their passports revoked, and that urgent changes need to be made to the Australia’s National Child Offender Register, which is currently only accessible by “very high ranking police”, and requires convicted offenders to self register.

“Our child sex offender register here in Australia is useless. We’ve even had high level police say that,” says Glen.

“Derryn Hinch is a big supporter of this, and will be making a huge focus in bringing in a public child sex offender register in Australia. We believe that has to happen.”

Glen knows the work will be dangerous, and that people might misjudge him as a white hero, but he isn’t phased by online opinions.

“Not everyone is going to walk my path and see what I’ve seen. People tend to read a few stories in the paper or online and then believe they’re experts,” he says candidly. “That’s typical of Australian culture.”

“(Paedophilia exists in) Australia, but we have a system to deal with it — we’re not a third world country.

“In Australia there are thousands of people like me to fight these crimes, but there aren’t thousands like me over in southeast Asia — that’s why I’m here.”

Project Karma is an Australian registered charity operating in South East Asia that operates with the support of many organisations within the Australian travel industry, including Gate 7, roomsXML, Travel Managers Australia and KarryOn. To support their work visit projectkarma.org.au

Jas Rawlinson is a Brisbane writer who is passionate about social justice. You can read her blog, Thoughts from Jas or follow her on Facebook.