Reaching Out to Cambodians

Leaving behind a place of suffering is not always enough.

Departure may end the torture, the fear, the uncertainty. But some experiences defy geography, survive the journey and take root in new places.

“I remembered everything from the Khmer Rouge, what they did to me and my family,” the man in the video says. “The ghosts wouldn’t go away. I beat up my children and my wife. I didn’t think there was any way to escape.”

Set to begin airing this month on Cambodian-language broadcasts nationwide, the public service announcement is part of a national media campaign aimed at preventing domestic violence and child abuse in the Cambodian community.

At a news conference last week at the United Cambodian Community Inc. in Long Beach, organizers said the campaign’s goal is to make the community aware that violence is unacceptable and to encourage victims and victimizers to seek help.

“We’re in a new country now, there’s new laws, new services available,” said Chetra Keo of the United Cambodian Community. “Let’s learn. Let’s use some of the services that are available.”

Members of the national advisory board hope the public service announcements on television, along with radio ads and posters, will help drive home the point by identifying the cause of at least some of the violence in Cambodian homes--memories of life under Pol Pot, ways of behavior rooted in another time and place.

“The whole population has been abused by the Khmer Rouge regime,” Keo said. “Culturally speaking, we came from a Buddhist practice. We are not taught to be aggressive. But because we went through war, through the Khmer Rouge, and the refugee camp in Thailand, there were so many years of violence that we saw before we came to this country.”

According to the 1990 census, Los Angeles County is home to about 30,000 Cambodians. Greater Long Beach has the highest concentration of Cambodians outside of Southeast Asia.

But the majority of the population came as refugees, after the Khmer Rouge, Keo said. Many of the older members do not speak English and are not highly educated, leaving the community isolated, unable to benefit from messages in the larger community about violence and parenting.

“Taking people from a Third World country and putting them here without educating them, the old practices will come along with the people,” Keo said. “We didn’t learn anything new.”

The national campaign, funded by a $35,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, is in part a response to the high rate of violence in Cambodian families compared to other Asian American communities in Los Angeles County.

Cambodians make up more than 30% of the child-abuse cases referred to the Asian Pacific Project of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Often people do not seek help for abuse, even from others within their community, because of the specter of shame.

“Typically from the night we get married we’re told, ‘Don’t bring the fire from the outside inside the home,’ ” said Sovann Tith, the United Cambodian Community’s executive director. “It is shameful to talk about or share with” people outside the family.

Tensions in the home are exacerbated by the same factors that can lead to violence in any household, Keo said. Unemployment in the community is high, creating an uncertain role for men who are accustomed to being breadwinners. Unlike their parents, children speak English and have learned to relate to their parents as American children do.

“The children seem to be different from what the parents are used to seeing in their countries,” said Sokhom Sin of the Department of Children and Family Services. “In Cambodia, we do not allow the children to have rights. Over here, they have their own rights to complain to the parents, to express their opinion. Then sometimes they have their own problems, too.”

The fear that children will be involved in gang violence also contributes to families taking extreme measures, such as whipping a child or tying a child down.

Sin, a supervisor with the Asian Pacific Project, has witnessed the scenarios depicted in the commercials played out in the lives of families that end up in the system.

In past years parents have been surprised to see social workers on their doorsteps. Now at least some are aware that violence and neglect can bring them to the attention of authorities.

“They still complain,” Sin said. “Mostly they complain about the children because the children do not listen to them. They have high expectations of their children.”

The commercials and posters were a collective effort, bringing together input from members of the local Cambodian community and community workers on the East Coast, where there are large numbers of Cambodians.

“We involved the people in the community in terms of the script,” Tith said. “These are real people. Some of them have experienced this. I am certain this will have a good response.”

One of the most important suggestions that came from the community was to make the TV spots more hopeful, demonstrating the possibility for change and happier lives, rather than punitive, said Katye Deioma of the United Cambodian Community.

The spot in which the man admits beating his wife and children is shot in black and white. The scene then fades to color as he, his wife and his children sit for a family portrait, all smiling because he has received help for his problem.

“I am learning to deal with the anger so I don’t have to hurt my family,” he says. “There’s no shame in getting help. The only shame is to keep hurting the ones you love.”

The posters and videos will be distributed throughout the state and nationwide in cities with large concentrations of Cambodians.