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.
วันจันทร์ที่ 14 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2553
FACE Objectives
FACE aims to work at the policy and action level, linking with other local and international NGOs who work directly with children in all parts of the country. The group will, in the best interest of the child, work with Thai governmental agencies as well as concerned agencies of other governments.
1. To help bring justice in the legal/justice system to sexually abused children and children in prostitution by monitoring the cases so that effective mechanism and action can be reached;
2. From lessons learned through FACE monitoring activities, recommendations will be submitted to the concerned authorities for amendment and improvement, at the structural level of the justice mechanism and the law regarding sexual crime against children;
3. To raise awareness among the public and law enforcement officers regarding the seriousness of the child abuse issues/cases and the social consequences of the victimized.
1. To help bring justice in the legal/justice system to sexually abused children and children in prostitution by monitoring the cases so that effective mechanism and action can be reached;
2. From lessons learned through FACE monitoring activities, recommendations will be submitted to the concerned authorities for amendment and improvement, at the structural level of the justice mechanism and the law regarding sexual crime against children;
3. To raise awareness among the public and law enforcement officers regarding the seriousness of the child abuse issues/cases and the social consequences of the victimized.
FACE Organization
FACE is a small local NGO in Thailand. And as mentioned earlier, though FACE was only established in April 1995, it is the continuation of action of the study in 1987 and of the ECPAT campaign since 1990. The Chairman of FACE, Mr. Wanchai Roujanavong, a civil servant , Public Prosecutor with the Office of the Attorney General, and Sudarat Sereewat, FACE Secretary General, have been working for the ECPAT campaign (Sudarat since 1990, Wanchai since 1994) and started to monitor some court cases in order to allow the victimized children to receive justice and the abusers be prosecuted. But as ECPAT then did not want to expand the mandate (from just campaigning) to monitoring work, the decision was made to set up FACE to work on this aspect of the problem of child sexual abuse occurred in Thailand , as a Thai organization. That is monitoring the legal cases against the abusers, especially foreign abusers arrested in Thailand and abroad in connection with child victims in Thailand. Besides, all information and methodology obtained from the work can be used as a model for monitoring work internationally, the international cooperation through the mutual legal assistance and finally, all result can be used as the content for continuing the campaign as well. Apart from that, we think that it is necessary to have a concrete action to deal with actual cases of child sexual abuse and use the lessons learned to advocate the policy makers and law makers to improve the legal mechanism and procedure dealing with international sexual crimes against children as well as the law itself.
The matter of setting up FACE was brought to discussion with some Thai authorities, especially those who have been supporting or be involved in the monitoring work, namely :
- Dr Saisuree Chutikul, the then Advisor to the Office of the Prime Minister,;
- Dr Kanit Na Nakorn, the then Attorney General;
- Judge Jaran Pakditanakul, the then General Secretary of the Judicial Affairs Office;
- Prosecutor Wanchai Roujanavong, the then Deputy Director of Mutual Legal Assistance for Criminal Matters Division;
- Police Major General Surasak Suttharom, Deputy Commander of Bangkok Metro Politan Police;
- Mr Seree Wangpaijitr, the then Governor of Tourism Authority of Thailand;
- Ms. Srisawang Phuavongphatya and Ms. Srisak Thaiarry, two senior NGOs friends etc.
That is how FACE was set up separately as a Thai organization carrying out work at the national, regional and international level.
The matter of setting up FACE was brought to discussion with some Thai authorities, especially those who have been supporting or be involved in the monitoring work, namely :
- Dr Saisuree Chutikul, the then Advisor to the Office of the Prime Minister,;
- Dr Kanit Na Nakorn, the then Attorney General;
- Judge Jaran Pakditanakul, the then General Secretary of the Judicial Affairs Office;
- Prosecutor Wanchai Roujanavong, the then Deputy Director of Mutual Legal Assistance for Criminal Matters Division;
- Police Major General Surasak Suttharom, Deputy Commander of Bangkok Metro Politan Police;
- Mr Seree Wangpaijitr, the then Governor of Tourism Authority of Thailand;
- Ms. Srisawang Phuavongphatya and Ms. Srisak Thaiarry, two senior NGOs friends etc.
That is how FACE was set up separately as a Thai organization carrying out work at the national, regional and international level.
BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Around the end of 1987, the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (ECTWT) established in Bangkok, Thailand since 1982 launched an advocacy and action study project on tourism and child prostitution in Asia. Three countries namely Thailand, Philippines and Sri Lanka were selected for the study because of the phenomena of children in the tourism business on one hand and ECTWT had network organizations which joined ECTWT programmes for the study of the negative impact of tourism on the third world countries on the other. It was planned to include India in the study as well, but partners there were not available. The findings of these three country studies and the brief reports on the issues in India and Taiwan were shared at an international consultation in Chiang Mai, May 1990 where both Dr Saisuree Chutikul, Advisor to the Office of Permanent Secretary, The Prime Minister’s Office and Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children and Executive Director of Child Rights Asianet were present as resource persons and keynote speakers. The study was named “Caught in Modern Slavery: Thourism and Child Prostitution in Asia.” The sixty-eight participants were so appalled by the magnitude and severity of the victimized children in prostitution, which identified by the UN as a contemporary form of slavery, that they voted to launch an international campaign to eradicate this evil practice.
Three people continued to work on the details of this international campaign; they were: Dr.Koson Srisang, the Executive Secretary of ECTWT at that time who initiated the study “Tourism and Child prostitution in Asia”, Rev. Ron O’Grady who had worked on tourism issue for several years and was a committee member of ECTWT, and Sudarat Sereewat
(-Srisang), the Director of the study project and researcher on Thailand. (Sudarat and June Rogers, co-pastor of the International Church of Bangkok, were co-directors of the study on ‘Tourism and Child Prostitution in Asia’) This campaign was called ECPAT: End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism, a three years programme (1991-1993 ) which was initially planned to be just a “movement” together with many other organizations and governmental agencies. The ECPAT office was established in Bangkok as a director of the study project, Sudarat- who is Thai and based in Bangkok, was asked to be the first Executive Secretary of ECPAT International Campaign.
Although the ECPAT campaign was quite successful in raising the public awareness as well as in encouraging many governments to amend existing laws and to enact new laws to deal with the problems, it became quite clear also that concrete legal measures and action are necessary to effectively curtail the sexual abuse of children. Thus at the beginning of ECPAT phase 2 (1994-1996) the then Executive Secretary, Sudarat, paid more attention to monitoring the legal/justice mechanism so that the victimized children would get justice, especially as it involves the international paedophiles. By then, the ECPAT monitoring work focused on arrested paedophile cases in Thailand where the office based, with the understanding (of Sudarat, the Monitoring Officer & Executive Secretary ) that implications could be drawn and used as model for other countries as well including co-operation needed from other national ECPAT networks especially in the countries of origin of the arrested paedophiles.
But after a little over a year some key people of ECPAT were not happy with the involvement of ECPAT in monitoring the cases of arrested paedophiles. ECPAT then wanted to limit its mandate for just campaign. At the same time, it was felt that the monitoring aspect of the work would be more effective handled if it becomes a separate project and be country specific. Consequently, a new group was eventually founded to monitor the cases of paedophiles arrested in Thailand, while still linking with the international groups in the countries of origin of those paedophiles, and monitor Thai legal/justice mechanism. This new group is FACE: Fight Against Child Exploitation. FACE was founded in April 1995. FACE was registered to be a foundation under the Thai law in February 2003 ( In the early stage, FACE was ‘the Coalition to Fight Against Child Exploitation)
It should be noted that the FACE Secretary General, Ms.Sudarat Sereewat, a founder and the first Executive Secretary of ECPAT (1991-1993) and ECPAT Monitoring Officer (1994 – March 1995), has been involved in this issue since the end of 1987 as a director of the three-countries studies as well as researcher on the study of Thailand case. ( Another director of the study was Ms.June Rogers, an American child advocate)
Three people continued to work on the details of this international campaign; they were: Dr.Koson Srisang, the Executive Secretary of ECTWT at that time who initiated the study “Tourism and Child prostitution in Asia”, Rev. Ron O’Grady who had worked on tourism issue for several years and was a committee member of ECTWT, and Sudarat Sereewat
(-Srisang), the Director of the study project and researcher on Thailand. (Sudarat and June Rogers, co-pastor of the International Church of Bangkok, were co-directors of the study on ‘Tourism and Child Prostitution in Asia’) This campaign was called ECPAT: End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism, a three years programme (1991-1993 ) which was initially planned to be just a “movement” together with many other organizations and governmental agencies. The ECPAT office was established in Bangkok as a director of the study project, Sudarat- who is Thai and based in Bangkok, was asked to be the first Executive Secretary of ECPAT International Campaign.
Although the ECPAT campaign was quite successful in raising the public awareness as well as in encouraging many governments to amend existing laws and to enact new laws to deal with the problems, it became quite clear also that concrete legal measures and action are necessary to effectively curtail the sexual abuse of children. Thus at the beginning of ECPAT phase 2 (1994-1996) the then Executive Secretary, Sudarat, paid more attention to monitoring the legal/justice mechanism so that the victimized children would get justice, especially as it involves the international paedophiles. By then, the ECPAT monitoring work focused on arrested paedophile cases in Thailand where the office based, with the understanding (of Sudarat, the Monitoring Officer & Executive Secretary ) that implications could be drawn and used as model for other countries as well including co-operation needed from other national ECPAT networks especially in the countries of origin of the arrested paedophiles.
But after a little over a year some key people of ECPAT were not happy with the involvement of ECPAT in monitoring the cases of arrested paedophiles. ECPAT then wanted to limit its mandate for just campaign. At the same time, it was felt that the monitoring aspect of the work would be more effective handled if it becomes a separate project and be country specific. Consequently, a new group was eventually founded to monitor the cases of paedophiles arrested in Thailand, while still linking with the international groups in the countries of origin of those paedophiles, and monitor Thai legal/justice mechanism. This new group is FACE: Fight Against Child Exploitation. FACE was founded in April 1995. FACE was registered to be a foundation under the Thai law in February 2003 ( In the early stage, FACE was ‘the Coalition to Fight Against Child Exploitation)
It should be noted that the FACE Secretary General, Ms.Sudarat Sereewat, a founder and the first Executive Secretary of ECPAT (1991-1993) and ECPAT Monitoring Officer (1994 – March 1995), has been involved in this issue since the end of 1987 as a director of the three-countries studies as well as researcher on the study of Thailand case. ( Another director of the study was Ms.June Rogers, an American child advocate)
Contact FACE
Address: P.O. Box 178
Bangkok Thailand
Fax: (66 -2) 519 2794
E-mail : facesudabkk@gmail.com
Fax: (66 -2) 519 2794
E-mail : facesudabkk@gmail.com
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