Dateline: Mar 25

This week on Dateline, Evan Williams travels to Nepal to investigate the growth of ‘voluntourism’, where visitors are encouraged to donate their time and money to help vulnerable children in Kathmandu’s orphanages.

Williams visits Thamel in Kathmandu, the tourist centre of Nepal, where visitors can book a placement as a volunteer in an orphanage. As well as working as volunteers, foreigners are also encouraged to donate money. The more than 500 orphanages in the Kathmandu valley have secured millions of dollars this way.

Filming undercover, Williams discovers that many children are not actually orphans, but have been taken from their impoverished parents. He also uncovers evidence suggesting the children are being mistreated and used by orphanage owners to attract money from donors.

One mother who gave up her children tells Williams that the orphanage owner refused to give her children back and she alleges that the children escaped only after a brutal beating.

“The beatings started from the very beginning,” she claims. “Her legs were beaten with a pipe and her toe was broken. They were told: ‘if you tell your parents you will be hung up and killed. We don’t care if we kill you because you’re not our children’.”

Williams also visits a poor neighbourhood in Kathmandu to track down a seven-year-old boy who tells him about his treatment at the hands of the orphanage’s staff. He claims all the children were beaten on a daily basis with sticks, belts and shoes, simply for talking and if one child talked, they were all beaten.

Tuesday, March 25 at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.