Australian Ian Muldoon spent nine months in a Cambodian prison after making a simple mistake at a bar… his experience was the stuff of nightmares
An Australian father who visited Cambodia has spoken of the horrific conditions inside one of the country's prisons after he was arrested for vandalising an ATM.
Queensland man Ian Muldoon said he was beaten, stabbed, extorted and repeatedly gang-raped during the nine months he was detained at Prey Sar Prison after he was arrested at the tail-end of his holiday in July 2023.
The prison is the country's largest, located in the capital Phnom Penh, and is notorious for overcrowding, with Amnesty International calling the conditions there 'squalid' and 'inhumane'.
Mr Muldoon was stopped by customs officers at Siem Reap International Airport on July 23, right before he was about to board a flight out of the country.
He was detained and and accused of damaging an ATM at Smile Mini Mart in Sangkat Boeung Keng Kang Khan Chamkar Mon, Phnom Penh, on July 10.
Mr Muldoon said he had planned a holiday to Thailand as he needed to reassess his life after his mother passed away and his relationship fell apart.
He explained going to Cambodia was not part of his original plan as he was supposed to fly to Vietnam but made a last minute decision to travel to Angkor.
On the second day of his 18-day trip, Mr Muldoon went to a bar down the road from his hotel and ordered a beer.
He explained the biggest mistake of his life was ringing a cow bell inside the bar, which he did not realise signalled that he would buy the whole bar a round of drinks.
He said ringing the cow bell had unwittingly earmarked him as a Westerner who had money.
'I rang the cow bell and that means you pay for all the drinks for the people in the bar. A couple of the people in the bar must have thought that this Australian guy's got money,' he told documentary maker Ali Tabrizi.
Mr Muldoon said his second error was ordering a Jack Daniels and coke and leaving the drink unattended on the bar while he went to the toilet.
He said when he returned he had a few sips before experiencing an intense migraine, blurred vision, slurred speech and he could not walk properly. He suspects the drink was spiked.
When he went to pay the tab, the bartender informed him that he did not have enough local currency and directed him to a nearby convenience store which had an ATM.
Two men followed him out of the bar and to the ATM, but when he arrived he could hardly stand and struggled to use the machine.
'I was unstable on my feet and then got in and tried to put my card into the ATM a fair few times,' Mr Muldoon said.
'I was that unsteady that I fell forward. I protected my face with one hand an then fell forward and my other hand hit the glass.'
Mr Muldoon stumbled back to his hotel and was followed by the two men - who he assumed drugged him with the intention to rob him - but they did not enter his room.
He woke up with an intense headache and patchy recollection of the day before but remembered he had to pay his tab. He went back to the bar and settled up before he continued on his holiday, unaware the CCTV from the ATM made local papers.
About two weeks later, when he tried to board his flight to Bangkok he was stopped by a customs agent who told him there was a black flag against his name.
They took him into a holding room where they spoke to him and showed him papers that were in the local language Khmer.
From there Mr Muldoon was taken from police cells, then court rooms, denied access to English translators before he was imprisoned in Prey Sar for months. He said he was only actually charged a month before he was released.
Mr Muldoon explained there were about 400 inmates in his cell and the conditions were disgusting with stifling heat, horrid smells, toilet buckets overflowing and disease rife.
On his second night he saw two big inmates raping a Cambodian man and has been haunted by his screams ever since.
'No one cares and pays attention to any of that. There's a room captain who just turned a blind eye. The police did not care. It continued until they were finished with him,' Mr Muldoon said.
'It was a horrific experience and something you're not prepared to see. Very traumatic. It's something you can't forget.'
Mr Muldoon said he also saw another inmate handcuffed to the back of the cell because he was sick and would not stop using the toilet bucket.
A group of men took it in turns to beat the man and the next morning, the sick inmate was dead.
He also tried to revive a man who stopped breathing during the night but he was beaten until he was unconscious for trying to help.
He said he witnessed 11 inmates who died in the prison, most after being beaten.
However, his most horrifying moments in prison were when he was gang raped on four separate occasions.
On one occasion, five inmates rushed into the shower and beat Mr Muldoon before they grabbed his arms and legs and forced him faced down onto the fifthly wet floor of the toilet.
You just feel worthless, powerless, a used up piece of meat. Just wishing I could have done more to fight but I couldn't,' Mr Muldoon said.
On another occasion, drunk prison guards 'plucked' him out of his cell - which he said the guards commonly did to other prisoners - before taking him back to their quarters and assaulting him.
He was beaten with sticks and a set of keys while three of the guards raped him before he was 'thrown back into his cell like it was nothing'.
'I have to speak to people every week including sexual trauma counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, you name it to try and process this,' Mr Muldoon said.
'Talking about it I can clearly see what happened. I can smell the smells still, I can feel the wetness on my face, the numbness, It's just something that I'll never be able to fully forget. Never.
'They have taken something away from me that can never be returned. I just feel like damaged goods ever since I got back.'
Mr Muldoon said his saving grace was his ex-partner in Australia, who maintained contact with local lawyers and the Australian Embassy.
She was able to transfer him money, via the embassy, which he used for phone calls, clean water and food and to sit up against a wall in a cell.
He claimed the prison was corrupt and the guards charged money for even the smallest of privileges.
The penalty for intentionally damaging an ATM also kept changing from $12,500 to $23,000 to $39,000.
He was eventually sentenced to seven months in prison and he estimates that he spent about $155,000 on phone calls, legal feels, penalties, bribes, food and water.
He claimed some inmates would give the 'generals' who ran the prisons tens of thousands of dollars to be 'released' but it was understood amongst the prisoners they would not get far.
He claimed they were taken somewhere outside the prison and shot or that they were beaten, taken to hospitals and their organs were harvested.
Mr Muldoon was released in March 2024 and has been trying to raise awareness of corruption and the human rights violations in Cambodia.
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