PSEA is the acronym used for the Prevention against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. About a decade ago, the world began to discover that sexual exploitation and abuse were possible, and even at times rampant, in the humanitarian world.  Scandals in large international NGOs were made public and the international development and humanitarian sectors began to pay close attention. Offenses varied from straightforward requirement of sex for food aid to more complex grooming and trafficking of children. There are many lessons the international NGO community has learned over the last decade and MCC has been working on implementing best practice in this area.

Our PSEA work is figuring out how to make sure no one in any MCC or MCC supported program is sexually exploited or abused. MCC hired a full time PSEA Coordinator a few years ago and last winter all of MCC Asia leadership went through an in-depth training. A brief outline of steps forward emerged amongst this messy topic. Our first responsibility is to train everyone – staff, partners and communities that we work in regarding what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior.  Then we need to make sure we have effective ways for all people to report sexual exploitation or abuse. Finally, we have to figure out how to investigate a report in a culturally sensitive, victim-centered way.

Training was a challenge and we’re still working on it! It requires a rather delicate conversation due to translation and cultural norms. Translation issues have included trying to translate a poster created by MCC about PSEA. Multiple translations came back in ways that blamed the victim or excused the behavior. We finally got one that works!  Next, we discovered that the Khmer language has no word (or concept) for neglect. This is based in the way Buddhism is practiced here. Everyone born into their role has been put there based on their behavior in a past life. So powerful people have the right to abuse their power because they earned that right. Weak people must have behaved badly in their past life and have been punished with a weaker status. This even extends to children. As a colleague explained, while it is sad and shameful to see parents not take care of their children, if the child had been good in a past life, they would have been born into a family with parents who care for their children. So all this begs the question – how do we begin to suggest that a powerful Western-based organization like MCC has a responsibility to the vulnerable people we are working with?  And further, how do we communicate that we really do want poor farmers and at-risk youth to report sexual exploitation and abuse, when the entire culture clearly states that they deserve whatever good or bad happens to them? We don’t have any answers, but we’re working on it together.

Our first staff training day was scheduled for March 2020.  That was massively delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but we were able to meet together this year in February to train our staff on PSEA and a few other topics. This is the first training any of them can remember having about this topic. Emotional conversations happened as some people stated that clearly it is the fault of the woman and how she dresses, if something happens to her. Others insisted that it is the fault of the person who has done wrong. Watching the face of one woman as she digested the idea that “it’s not her fault”, I realized that part of her resistance to the ideas was that by shifting her belief she lost the power to protect herself by wearing the right clothing. And just as it is freeing and empowering for people to realize its not their fault that a crime occurred against them, I am now struggling with how to help my staff feel safe when the tried and true mental certainties are no longer stable.

It’s a complex issue. We’re still working on putting a reporting mechanism in place. We’re holding a training for partners next month online and hope to have a full partner gathering session on the topic next May, COVID-19 permitting. We’ve looking into ways of training investigators and talking with local people about what is the least harmful way to address situations. 

I will say, for all the complexity of implementing these worthy policies in the Cambodian context, MCC has done a great job on training the expat staff.  Charles and I received multiple trainings in PSEA, trauma first aid, and trauma informed responses before we ever left Akron.  And last year one or our GSL participants was able encourage a peer in another country to report the weird behavior of her host family, effectively removing that peer from harm before anything damaging occurred. She said that she knew the situation was weird and reminded her peer about the training they had done together with MCC before they started their assignment, and that’s what gave her the courage and the knowledge of how to speak up. So it’s working. We’re holding onto the success stories and going one step at a time toward a program, and a world, that normalizes speaking up about sexual exploitation and abuse and their communities having a trauma informed response.