FACE Activities

1) Monitoring the cases of arrested paedophiles so that they will go through the legal procedure until the judges pass the verdict. We coordinate and encourage the law enforcement officers to perform their task more actively and effectively, assist in obtaining evidence especially form the victimized children if necessary. We usually accompany those children to court, help solve their personal problems, sometimes their family problems as well. We often travel to the courts to attend hearings in other provinces all over Thailand.

For example, back in 1996, we monitored 32 cases altogether, some are continuations from previous years (1994 and 1995), some are new cases in occurring in 1996. These cases take place in various provinces: Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in the North, Khon Kaen and Udonthani in the Northeast, Phuket in the South, Cholburi (Pattaya) and Rayong in the East, and many cases happened in Bangkok. Up to the year 2007, FACE has been monitoring altogether about 140 cases of foreign peadophiles in cooperation with Thai police, prosecutors as well as with foreign police agencies from various countries.

For trafficking cases, during 1997-1999, FACE Director was appointed to monitor the
enforcement of the new Prostitution Act B.E. 2539 ( 1996) which actually dealing with children in prostitution and forced prostitution; it was “trafficking issue.” We had done a report on monitoring the enforcement of the Prostitution Act of B.E. 2539 (1996) involved about 100 cases of girls and women being rescued from the “entertainment places” (or disguised brothels ) Then since November 1997 when the “trafficking Act” (The Measure to Prevent and Suppress of Trafficking in Women and Children Act B.E.) enacted, until end of 2007, FACE has monitored about 200 trafficking cases.

Before 2008, FACE has never run a rehabilitation centre or children shelter. We did not accommodate these children. Some of them were with the CPCR home, some taken care of by the government’s children centres run by the Public Welfare Department (later was called Social Development and Welfare Department), and some stayed with their own parents. FACE dealt with them on the legal basis of attempting to obtain justice for them regarding sexual crime matters, and in some cases, attempting to obtain compensation for them from the abusers

2) Advocacy as well as working as members on various committees and working groups (both Prosecutor Wanchai Roujanavong, the FACE Chairman, and Ms Sudarat Sereewat, FACE Director) appointed by various governmental agencies especially the National Commission on Women’s Affairs (NCWA), Public Welfare Department, the National Youth Bureau (all three agencies do not exist at present; they are under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security with different names and function) the Royal Thai Police, the Ministry of Justice, and the Parliament as members of various Commission and Sub-commission, to work on the law reform and the improvement of legal procedures and mechanisms at the structural level as well as to work on the issue of child sexual abuse and trafficking at the policy level including the National Plan of Action.
Both Wanchai and Sudarat were in the Parliamentary Special Commission on Trafficking Act B.E.2551 (2008)

3) Campaigning and awareness raising through media (articles and interviews) giving lectures, presentations, participating as panelist/resource persons at conferences, seminars, or workshops on the issues. These activities have been carried out both nationally and internationally by both Prosecutor Wanchai Roujanavong, the FACE Chairman, and Ms Sudarat Sereewat, FACE Director. Apart from that, press release regarding the conviction of foreign paedophiles have been sent out to national and international media and network organizations in order to raise public awareness and participation as a watchdog to report about the abuse of children which may come to their knowledge.

4) Capacity Building :
FACE has been working on capacity building with many government agencies on the issues of child sexual abuse, child sex tourism, trafficking, stateless people, for example. The participants are from various groups, namely, police, prosecutors, judicial personnel, the executive government officers as well as the practitioners in justice system, social workers NGOs personnel and communities. FACE works together with our partners; we have competent high rank government officers, police, prosecutors, judges and other NGOs network as our resource persons/ trainers. Awareness raising and advocacy work can be done quite successfully with high level officers during the training as well.

5) Documentation:
FACE tries to work on documenting the activities especially the legal cases and advocacy work. The legal cases documentation presented the lessons learned and good practices as well as the good cooperation among agencies concerned. So far only a few books and documentation have been done. We need to work more on this.