I was six-years-old when my cannibal tribe branded me a sorcerer and then plotted to kill and eat me. Then Australian TV networks got involved – this is the fallout from their broken promises

EXCLUSIVE 

Wawa Chombonggai was just six-years-old when he was marked for death – and to be eaten – by his cannibal tribe in the deepest, darkest wilds of Indonesian Papua. 

The innocent young boy – whose tragic story captured hearts around the globe – was soon rescued from that cruel fate as duelling Australian tabloid TV programs scrambled to take credit for saving him. 

Now, almost two decades on, Wawa has accused the rival networks of cynically exploiting his plight for ratings and abandoning him as soon as he was no longer useful.  

‘I’m very closed now,’ Wawa told Daily Mail Australia from his new home in North Sumatra.

‘I’m afraid of being tricked again or used as material for their media.’ 

Wawa’s concerns are understandable given his complicated experience with Australian commercial television. 

Radio host Ben Fordham was a young gun TV reporter when he first discovered Wawa’s deathly predicament while trekking through Papua’s dense tropical jungle in search of the cannibal Korowai tribe for Nine’s 60 Minutes program in 2006. 

Today, Wawa leads a happy and healthy life in the North Sumatra city of Medan but says he remains troubled by the way his plight was exploited in Australia’s tabloid TV ratings war

A young Ben Fordham interviews little Wawa and the guide who would eventually save him, Kornelus Sembiring, for his 60 Minutes report on the lost cannibal tribes of Papua

During the trip, he learned Wawa had been denounced as a Khakhua-Kumu – or evil male witch – by his isolated tribe, who believed he had used sorcery to kill both of his parents after they unexpectedly died earlier that year. 

In line with tribal customs, the clan was planning to hunt Wawa and devour his flesh as part of a traditional revenge killing thought to dispel his magic and free the souls of his victims. 

In a last-gasp bid to save the boy’s life, his uncle secreted him away to a neighbouring village in the hope he could evade their tribe’s ‘Kakhua killers’. 

Fordham described meeting Wawa as ‘the most chilling moment’ of his expedition, with his ‘lost tribe’ guide, Paul Raffaele, predicting the youngster would be lucky to see his 16th birthday. 

‘They’ve got their eye on him and, that kid, any time in the next 10 years … they could get him, then they’d kill him, then they’d eat him,’ Raffaele warned Fordham. 

Despite the fatal fate awaiting Wawa, 60 Minutes chose not to intervene in the tribe’s rituals, with Raffaele insisting it was more important to respect the clan’s culture. 

‘Okay, we don’t understand that they kill and eat each other but to them that’s very important, at the very soul of their being,’ he said at the time.

‘My desperate feeling is: just let them be as they are – because, within 20 or 30 years, it’ll be all over anyway.’

But when footage of the trembling and clearly terrified young Wawa was picked up by news outlets around the globe, Raffaele had a change of heart. 

The one-time ABC foreign correspondent then tried to convince 60 Minutes to return to the jungle to save Wawa – while filming it for a special TV documentary.

Fordham trekked into the jungles of Indonesia to find the world’s lost cannibal clans

His report eventually led to Wawa being rescued and starting a new life in North Sumatra

When he failed to convince executives at Nine to invest in the idea, he took the concept across town to the network’s rivals at Seven. 

Before long, the host of Seven’s now defunct Today Tonight current affairs program, Naomi Robson, was jetting off on an impromptu mercy mission to rescue Wawa with a dutiful television crew in tow. 

And that’s when things got really dicey. 

Within days of setting out for the condemned boy’s village, Robson and her crew were inexplicably arrested by Indonesian authorities for entering the country without proper documentation and duly deported. 

Acrimonious allegations were immediately raised about who had tipped them off about Robson’s rescue operation amid claims both Nine and Seven were prioritising their commercial TV ratings war over Wawa’s real-life dilemma.  

Seven outright accused Nine of putting not only Wawa’s life in danger but also using ‘dirty tricks’ to jeopardise the safety of Robson and her Australian crew.

Nine’s then head of news and current affairs, Garry Linnell, claimed he was appalled by the allegations.

‘Any suggestion Nine has contacted or alerted Indonesian authorities about Seven’s proposed journey are absolutely false and reprehensible,’ he said at the time.

Naomi Robson and her crew arrive back in Australia after being arrested and deported from Papua by Indonesia authorities 

Nine’s former head of news and current affairs Garry Linnell has confessed he placed the call that resulted in Robson and her crew being deported

However, five years ago, he gave a starkly different account in a joke-littered confession while conceding he had feared the rescue mission would be a ratings and publicity ‘bonanza’ for his network rivals. 

‘Seven intended to find Wawa, spirit him away from his small village, place him in a ‘safe’ home and then trumpet how they had saved ‘The Boy 60 Minutes Left Behind’,’ Linnell wrote in a tell-all column for the New Daily.

‘As the director of news and current affairs at Nine, I understood just how much was at stake.

‘A large cooking pot was starting to boil somewhere in the lush jungles of West Papua and Wawa would require just a little seasoning before he was added to the menu. 

‘But far more life-threatening was the potential ratings bonanza for Seven.

‘The initial report about Wawa had pulled in more than two million viewers [for Nine] and saving him would be a coup for Seven.

‘I also knew that with one telephone call Seven’s brazen attempt to humiliate Nine might be stopped. 

Wawa took up karate after being rescued from his tribal village by Kornelus Sembiring and raised alongside the guide’s own children in Indonesia’s north

These days, Wawa is a popular karate instructor at his local suburban dojo where he is proud to train the next generation of young martial artists

‘Robson and her crew were said to be travelling on tourist visas, something the Indonesian government did not kindly look upon. 

‘I wrestled with the dilemma. There were ethical issues to ponder. Moral implications to be considered. Several long and excruciating seconds later, I came to a decision.

‘In war, you can just about excuse anything. I picked up the phone and began dialling. Of course, all hell broke loose after that.

‘Robson and four colleagues were arrested after entering Indonesia and deported a day later. 

‘Seven accused Nine of deliberately sabotaging their mission to save Wawa. I hit back, describing such claims as unsubstantiated and beneath contempt. Everyone began piling on.’

In the midst of the media storm, Nine’s Indonesian guide Kornelius Sembirang quietly returned to the isolated jungle village and rescued young Wawa himself. 

Athletic and academically gifted, Wawa is undertaking a sports science degree at the Medan State University – though he remains troubled by his mounting tuition fees

Wawa has played soccer throughout his adolescence and remains an avid football fan

For the past 18 years, Sembirang has raised Wawa as his own son alongside his children in North Sumatra – his early schooling paid for by the Seven Network. 

Today, Wawa leads a happy and healthy life in the city of Medan, where the devout Christian told Daily Mail Australia he continued to study for a sports science degree at the State University, was an avid footballer and taught karate at his local dojo. 

He knows that without Seven’s early financial assistance – and the public outcry caused by Fordham’s initial report for Nine – he may not be here today. 

But it is a complicated relationship. 

Five years ago, Seven’s now axed weekly current affairs show Sunday Night approached Wawa with a financial proposition.

It wanted to pay him to return to his ‘lost tribe’ and confront the villagers who ‘wanted to eat him’ as part of a story. 

Later asked on camera by reporter Matt Doran what made him ‘want to go back’, Wawa was presented as being keen to confront his long-lost relatives about their violent customs and to urge them to adopt a more peaceful way of life. 

Wawa, who repeatedly broke down in tears throughout the emotional expedition back to his childhood home, now suggests that was not the case. 

Instead, the entire concept was conceived by Seven in yet another example of him being ‘used’ by tabloid TV shows in their quest for ratings supremacy. 

While he appeared to strike up a firm friendship with Doran onscreen, he said he actually found the Sunday Night reporter to be ‘very arrogant’ when the cameras weren’t rolling. 

Worse yet, Wawa claims he only agreed to participate in the hour-long special after the network’s producers promised to bring him to Australia for a follow-up story – only for them to disappear at the end of the shoot and never contact him again. 

‘I returned to Papua with a TV crew from Sunday Night which was a hassle,’ Wawa, who speaks only broken English, told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘Then Matt Doran and his friends went home to Australia and I didn’t get any reports (from them) and I wasn’t called to Australia. 

‘And that’s what had made me given them the information (and participate) to begin with.’ 

While Wawa and Sunday Night’s Matt Doran appeared to strike up a firm friendship onscreen but, away from the cameras, Wawa says he thought the reporter was ‘very arrogant’

Wawa says he has turned his back on commercial TV for good after a complicated relationship that left him feeling ‘tricked’ and ‘used’ by Australia’s major networks

Daily Mail Australia spoke with a number of people who worked on both Nine and Seven’s stories about Wawa and they all said they were stunned by his claims they had turned their back on him.

Members of the Nine team said the network put a lot of time and thought into how to responsibly respond to Wawa’s situation, and felt it was inappropriate to whisk him away from his childhood home for a TV special. 

Seven’s team were equally surprised and said they always had Wawa’s best interests at heart, had enjoyed a good relationship with him and never promised to fly him to Australia. 

For now though, Wawa has more pressing matters on his mind.  

During his journey back to his Papuan homeland, he discovered his younger brother Devi had also been condemned to death by their cannibal tribe after being denounced as a sorcerer. 

But given his past experiences, he said he no longer had any interest in discussing a potential mercy mission with Australia’s commercial television outlets. 

Like his foster father’s rescue operation before him, Wawa’s next venture to the land of his lost tribe will likely play out well out of sight of TV cameras.