By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
The feared abduction of 50 boys and girls aged 10 and over from a Perth-funded Thai orphanage for sexual trafficking appears to have been carefully orchestrated, including a trafficker ingratiating himself into the village as a kindly teacher.

Archbishop Barry Hickey appealed to Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on 18 February for urgent help in finding the children who were taken on 28 December overnight.
A spokeswoman for Mr Smith’s Canberra office told The Record on 21 February that the Minister would comment publicly once he responds to Archbishop Hickey officially, which would be done “over the next few days” once Mr Smith returns from overseas.
A young man entered the village in early October 2009 stating he was Karen, the hill-tribe people of northern Thailand, offering to teach the children the Thai language.
Midland parishioner Adelia Bernard, who has worked for over 30 years for the Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees (COERR) which was established by the Catholic Bishops Conference of Thailand in 1978, said she met the man late last year. She said he impressed the Buddhist nun, the Venerable Maechee, who heads the local temple and runs the orphanage.
Mrs Bernard, a member of the One Heart Association that has raised $700 a month for the past six years for the orphanage, said that the Buddhist nun “was pleased with the man’s dedication to the needs of the children at the orphanage, who at the time numbered 94”.
She added that while abductions were sadly common in the country, taking 50 children would have been impossible if not for the young man posing as a teacher.
“He was lovely; everyone liked him,” said Mrs Bernard, adding that his charm and earning the children’s trust meant he easily convinced them to jump into the large truck which villagers reported left before daybreak.
The police were notified by both the Buddhist nun and Australian Thai-born Presentation Sister Cecelia, who works in the region buying rice for the orphanage with money raised by the One Heart Association.
The nuns were told that the matter would be “taken care of by proper authorities”.
Mrs Bernard – whose husband Norm worked as a security officer on the Cambodia-Thai border to warn Catholic relief services of imminent attacks on villagers – said the kidnapping was clearly highly orchestrated. She said that some ten days before the abduction, another man arrived at the orphanage with a gift of a bag of rice and promising further assistance.
When the Buddhist nun accepted the gift, he offered to photograph the children.
When she found he was photographing the girls naked, the nun made him leave.
Photographing the children is a common part of traffickers’ operations, Mrs Bernard said, as the photos are used to sell the children to buyers.
Mrs Bernard said that local police have a lead, as the man posing as a teacher found himself without ID at the checkpoint on the way out of the village and lost the bag which held his ID.
This was picked up by a villager and is now believed to be in the hands of police.
The highly-organised nature of the kidnapping suggests it was orchestrated by a large organisation and, in Mrs Bernard’s experience, they are not afraid to harm or kill people as the children are worth millions of dollars to them.
“These things happen not irregularly. People become accustomed to it and close over and just wait for it to finish. But not with 50 children,” Mrs Bernard said.
“I don’t think that’s ever happened before.
“It’s a bit shocking.
“Sometimes we can say the locals have no heart and sell their children, but we need to understand that this whole situation derives from chronic poverty which has existed for years there, and reveals the darker side of the human soul. It happens all along that zone, especially in Cambodia.
“The local police would’ve known, as he befriended everybody, so the children have no protection, they would have found it very hard to talk to authorities, even the nuns.
“So we must be careful and wise in what we do and how we do it.
“We need the royal family, Buddhist organisations and local police to snap into action to find the children.”