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TV3 New Zealand
Saturday November 27 2004
6pm News
News
reader: Graham Cleghorn is serving a 20-year sentence.
In a report for tomorrow’s Herald on Sunday he claims from jail that the
girls who testified against him were bribed and coerced to make false
allegations. Tony Field reports:
Tony
Field: Cleghorn is serving a 20 year
sentence for child sex crimes he says he didn’t commit. He claims the girls
who testified against him were bribed and coerced by a Non Governmental
Organisation called the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Centre.
Graham
Cleghorn (shots of Cambodian street scene,
Cleghorn in both Western & Eastern clothes): The CWCC know that anybody
charged with a sex offence - everybody deserts them. Their friends walk off
and leave them.
Tony
Field: Cleghorn and his supporters say
the CWCC’s been offering girls $10,000 each to win convictions against foreign
men.
Graham
Cleghorn: $10,000 is 40 year’s salary. How can -
that’s the equivalent of saying to somebody in New Zealand, would they sell
you out for five million. And it’s pretty hard not to accept.
Tony
Field: But the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs says it has no reason to doubt the convictions. Nor does child abuse
campaigner Denise Ritchie who was briefed by staff at New Zealand’s Bangkok
Embassy the week Cleghorn was convicted in February.
Denise
Ritchie: The Ambassador did tell me that he
had sent one of the Embassy staff over to monitor the trial. One would expect
that, if there was any perception of a miscarriage of justice, the New
Zealand Embassy would be one of the first people to be jumping up and down.
Tony
Field: Cleghorn says since his conviction
several girls have come forward saying the CWCC held them against their will
and tried to force them to testify.
Graham
Cleghorn: They held them in rooms, and they told
them they would never see their mothers again if they didn’t say that I’d sexually
assaulted them.
Tony
Field: The organisation denies
offering money to anyone to testify. The case will be appealed next month. British Embassy staff have been visiting Cleghorn in prison
to check on his condition. His family are worried that his health’s
deteriorating. His daughter Heidi says her father’s been suffering from chest
pains, but prison authorities are ignoring his requests for medical help.
Tony Field, Three News.
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