Controversial Cambodian Activist Fights Southeast Asian Sex Trade

The Jakarta Globe, May 23, 2012

Somaly Mam attends the Somaly Mam Foundation's Voice of Change Anti-Human Trafficking event at The Box on April 6, 2010, in New York City. (AFP Photo/Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

Sold into a brothel as a child, Cambodian activist Somaly Mam has become one of the most recognizable, glamorous and controversial faces of the global anti-sex slavery movement.

The quirky, energetic campaigner boasts a string of celebrity supporters and has been named a CNN hero of the year, but she is as divisive among anti-trafficking activists as she is beloved by the international press.

Most recently, Mam kicked up a storm of controversy when she allowed her “old friend,” New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof, to “live-tweet” a brothel raid in the northern Cambodian town of Anlong Veng in November.

“Girls are rescued, but still very scared. Youngest looks about 13, trafficked from Vietnam,” Kristof wrote to his more than one million followers on the Twitter microblogging website, in remarks that trafficking experts say raised questions of safety and consent.

For Mam, who created the anti-trafficking organisation AFESIP and now runs an eponymous foundation, the benefit of the attention Kristof brings to trafficking issues outweighs the security concerns.

“Even if you’re not tweeting it is also dangerous ... but if [Kristof] tweets it, it’s better because more people get awareness and understanding,” Mam told Agence France-Presse in an interview during a visit to Vietnam.

Tania DoCarmo of Chab Dai, an anti-trafficking group working in Cambodia, said the raid coverage was an “unethical” PR stunt which broke Cambodian anti-trafficking laws and which “sensationalizes” a very complex issue.

“Doing ‘impromptu’ coverage of children in highly traumatizing situations would not be considered ethical or acceptable in the West ... it is inappropriate and even voyeuristic to do this in developing nations such as Cambodia.”

“This is especially true with children and youth who are unable to provide legal consent anyway,” she said.

AFESIP says it has been involved in rescuing about 7,000 women and girls in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam since 1997.

In Cambodia alone, there are more than 34,000 commercial sex workers, according to a 2009 government estimate.

The line between “victim” and “trafficker” is often not always clear. Women who were tricked into working in a brothel may go on to recruit others in the same way.

Mam, who is in her early-40s but does not know her exact year of birth, was sold into a brothel in her early teens by a man who she says was either her grandfather or an uncle and then repeatedly raped and abused until, after watching a friend be killed in front of her, she managed to escape.

“I was completely broken,” she said, adding that this experience of being a victim is something she cannot forget and is what drives her anti-trafficking campaigning.

Within the anti-trafficking field, Mam takes a controversially hard-line stance: all sex workers are victims, whether of trafficking or circumstance, as no woman would really choose to work in a brothel.

“Sometimes a woman — she tells me she is choosing to be a prostitute (but if you ask) how about your daughter? You want her to be? She’ll say: No, no, no’,” said Mam. “[they] have no choice”.

This position, which underpins Mam’s reliance on brothel raids as a tool to fight trafficking, enrages other activists, such as the Asia Pacific Sex Worker Network, which argues consenting adult sex workers need “rights not rescues.”

Sweeping raid-and-rescue operations and police round-ups of street-based sex workers are not only ineffective, experts say, but lead to “systematic violations of sex workers’ human rights,” New York-based Human Rights Watch said in 2010 report.

Mam’s organization, AFESIP, has also been criticized for accepting sex workers picked up during Cambodian police roundups which HRW has said constitute “arbitrary arrests and detentions of innocent people.”

Mam dismissed HRW’s assessment.

“When a girl has been killed in the brothel does HRW go into the brothel? So who are you exactly? When I am in the brothel, one of my friend she has been killed. Did HRW go there? No,” she said.

Consenting, adult sex workers detained during the police raids — who say they were neither victims of trafficking nor wanting AFESIP’s services — have also reported being held against their will at AFESIP shelters.

“The first time [a sex worker] come to the shelter she don’t want to stay ... because she don’t know us,” Mam said, adding that women are so “broken” by sex work they want to stay in the familiar surroundings of the brothel.

“I always say: please, can you just stay one or two days, treat it like a holiday,” she said, adding that if women chose to stay in the brothels she respected that decision.

“I’m not going to force them, I have been forced my own life. It’s up to them,” she said, adding that this applied within the shelters, with no girl being forced to speak to the press or share her experiences with anyone.

Mam says she tries to listen to and learn from criticism of her tactics and approach, adding that she has “made a lot of mistakes in my life,” and has never claimed to have all the answers to how to end sex slavery.

“What I know how to do is just helping the women,” she said.

Agence France-Presse

Savior of trafficked women wins POSCO prize

Somaly Mam smiles after an interview in southern Seoul on Wednesday. (Kirsty Taylor/The Korea Herald)

Cambodian survivor of sexual slavery tells how helping others healed her heart

2012-03-28

By Kirsty Taylor (kirstyt@heraldm.com)

The Korea Herald

The first woman Somaly Mam rescued from prostitution has stayed in her heart for years, inspiring her to help others.

“I came back from work and I saw a woman who had been beaten in the street,” the Cambodian refuge founder recalled. “She was very skinny with all the blood coming out. I thought: ‘What are the people doing to her?’ I didn’t think of HIV, AIDS or anything ― I just ran over to her. I took her in my arms. I just looked at her and I knew what she wanted to tell me because it happened to me too.”

Mam, who has been awarded the 2012 POSCO TJ Park Prize for Community Development and Philanthropy for helping women escape sex trafficking knows their plight only too well. She herself was sold into sexual slavery at a very young age.

After being born into a tribal minority family living in extreme poverty in Cambodia’s Mondulkiri province, Mam was sold into sexual slavery by a man posing as her grandfather. To this day, she still does not know who the man really was. She was forced into prostitution and stayed in a brothel until one day she was forced to watch as her best friend was viciously murdered. She then escaped her captors in fear of a similar fate.

Nick Kristof to the rescue!

Nicholas Kristof amd Somaly Mam (Credit: Twitter/Wikipedia)

When a New York Times columnist live tweets a Cambodia brothel raid, who benefits -- the women or the reporter?

Monday, Nov 7, 2011

By Irin Carmon

Salon

Yesterday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof live-tweeted a brothel raid in Cambodia. Kristof’s novel approaches to international women-rights reporting have previously included purchasing two Cambodian underage prostitutes for the purpose of liberating them and naming a 9-year-old Congolese rape victim. After those generated criticism from victims’ advocates, Kristof shouldn’t be surprised that not everyone was cheering along his recent outing.

The narrative proceeded in a familiar fashion: There were villains, even some with military ties; then there is a rescue. Kristof tweeted, “Girls are rescued, but still very scared Youngest looks about 13, trafficked from Vietnam.” And then, “Social workers comforting the girls, telling them they are free, won’t be punished, rapes are over.” He was accompanied by Cambodian anti-trafficking activist and forced-prostitution survivor Somaly Mam. Post-presidential niece Lauren Bush chimed in perkily, “Awesome reporting by @NickKristof as the (sic) raided a brothel in Cambodia with @SomalyMam this morning!”

Women rescue Cambodian sex slaves

Stolen Innocence: One Woman's Fight Against Child Sex Slavery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llfsKMo_mEQ

Sold to a brothel as a child, Somaly Mam now leads an effort to rescue young sex slaves.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Alice Daniel

SuccessMagazine.com

Somaly Mam grew up orphaned in a tiny community, a speck of cleared land with bamboo huts in the wooded hills of northeastern Cambodia. She survived by scavenging for her food, sleeping in a hammock and sometimes getting help from a local family. She doesn’t know when she was born exactly, but when she was around 10, a stranger who called himself her grandfather came to her little village and took her away to be his servant. A few years later, when he needed money, he sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh.

For the next decade, she was forced to endure the unthinkable. But she survived, severely traumatized, yet strong. And committed. Today, when she advocates through the Somaly Mam Foundation for the millions of girls enslaved in brothels in Cambodia and worldwide, she is advocating in part for herself.

Some 5,000 girls have been rescued by her organization since 1996.

Former sex slave speaks

Monday, March 28, 2011
By Kelsey Wells
Staff Writer

A person's past does not necessarily determine their future, Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam said in a lecture Friday afternoon in the State Farm Room of the Business and Aerospace Building.

As the keynote speaker for the annual Global Discourses in Women's and Gender Studies conference, Mam discussed how she spent much of her early life as a sex slave but has dedicated the rest of it to helping others escape the abuse and illness she grew up with.

Mam said she was sold in slavery when she was a young teenager by a man posing as her grandfather. Even today, she said she does not know exactly how old she is or who her parents were. She also does not know her real name.

Her owner forced her to live in a snake and scorpion infested brothel with other young slaves, she said.

Former child sex slave elicits tears at Imagine Solutions Conference

Somaly Mam's foundation cares for rescued sex slaves in Southeast Asia. / MICHAEL ANGELO, special to news-press.com

Cambodian now saves girls from prostitution

Mar. 22, 2011
News-Press.com

• The Somaly Mam Foundation is the fundraising nonprofit formed in 2007 that pays for efforts Mam began in 1996 under the auspices of Agir pour les Femmes en Situation Precaire ("Acting for Women in Distressing Situations"), or AEFSIP.
• The foundations seek to end human trafficking and aid its young female victims with shelters, clinics and schools.
• For her work, Mam was honored as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2009 and was featured as a CNN Hero. She received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, The World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child, and was named Glamour Magazine's 2006 Woman of the Year.
• For more information, go to somaly.org.

Somaly Mam was a child sex slave.

She's not sure how old she is now - probably about 40. A Cambodian, Mam owns a house near Phnom Penh. But "home" is not on a map. It is where "the girls" in her shelters are.

Through two nonprofit foundations, Mam has rescued more than 4,000 children who were victims of human trafficking. Most are 12 to 15 years old, and like Mam, they were commodities sold by their families into lives of prostitution.

Mam spoke Tuesday to attendees at the Imagine Solutions Conference at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples.

150 Women Who Shake the World: Somaly Mam from Cambodia

Somaly Mam (Photo: Agnes Dherbeys / VII for NewsweekAdd caption

By The Daily Beast

She was raped at 12 and forced into marriage at 14. Or at least Somaly Mam thinks that was her age—abandoned as a baby, she’s not sure what year she was born. At 16 she was sold to a brothel, where she endured years of torture and was forced to watch a pimp shoot her best friend in the head. In 1991 she met and married a French human-rights worker and fled to Paris. But four years later she returned to Cambodia—and to the scene of her horrific abuse. Pretending to be a nurse for Doctors Without Borders, she infiltrated Cambodia’s brothels and handed out condoms. Later she founded an NGO that operates safe havens for victims of the sex trade in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. To date, the group has saved 4,000 women and girls. But Mam’s work is nowhere near done—there are some 50,000 sex slaves and prostitutes in Cambodia alone; worldwide at least 2 million are sold into sex slavery every year, a quarter of them young children. Despite these daunting numbers, nothing can deter Mam, petite and softspoken, from her crusade. In 2006, in a truly macabre warning to stop her crusade, her own 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped, raped, and nearly sold into slavery. Once reunited, Mam took her daughter’s face in her hands and said: “You’ve suffered what you’ve suffered. Now you take that pain and you help others.”

Somaly Mam

Activist Somaly Mam attends the US Stop Sex Trafficking Of Children & Young People Campaign kick off event in New York City Photograph: Bennett Raglin/WireImage

Cambodian anti-sex trafficking campaigner and founder of AFESIP, rescuing women from brothels and supporting their recovery

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Emine Saner

The Guardian

Growing up in extreme poverty under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Mam was sold into sexual slavery when she was 12, eventually ending up in a Phnom Penh brothel where she endured unimaginable daily torture and rape. After being made to watch as another girl, her best friend, was murdered, Mam escaped and was helped out of Cambodia by a French aid worker.

Instead of trying to rebuild her life in France, where she married, Mam returned to Cambodia to help girls who hadn't been so lucky. In 1996, she set up her organisation Afesip (Action for Women in Distressing Situations), to rescue girls and women from brothels and support their recovery. She has already helped more than 4,000 women and children, some as young as five, escape sexual slavery in south-east Asia and in 2007 set up the Somaly Mam Foundation, to raise awareness, campaign for change and fund projects to rescue and rehabilitate women and children sold into slavery.

Mam's work has come at a terrible personal cost. Her life has been threatened by pimps and brothel owners, and in 2006, her then 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped and raped by three men, as retaliation for the work her mother does. In an interview in 2005 , Mam admitted to periods of desperation, including more than one suicide attempt. But in more recent years, asked why she continues to fight, she has always responded, "I don't want to go without leaving a trace."

Congratulations to Somaly Mam and Mu Sochua, 2011 honorees of Women Deliver 100

An Investment to End Slavery

January 27, 2011
By Somaly Mam
Trafficking Survivor and Activist
Huffington Post

It is hard reality to share. I fear that when I give a speech, participate on a panel or attend an event...I fear my words will not fully impart the enormity of the problem. While honored to be able to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, I worried I would not be able to do the facts justice.

Currently, there are 27 million slaves around the world. Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar human black market industry making it the second largest crime in the world. The majority of female victims are trafficked for prostitution. Poverty and lack of economic opportunities are the leading cause of slavery.

Traffickers often target impoverished, poorly educated individuals from the developing world looking for work or a safer place to call home. Once tricked with promises of safe passage, provision of work, help with visas or easy money, trafficking victims are placed in jobs with long hours, little or no pay, no health care and harsh working conditions. Many face emotional and physical abuse on a regular basis.

Those are the harsh facts. What follows is the hope.

Video Clips from AMW On the Road Cambodia

'America's Most Wanted' Airing Special Exposing American Pedophiles in Cambodia

John Walsh and child rescuer Somaly Mam. (FOX/AMW)

November 12, 2010
By Hollie McKay
Fox News

In a special episode of “America’s Most Wanted” airing on FOX this Saturday, host John Walsh will take viewers to the front lines of the international battle against child predators in Cambodia, a nation frequented by pedophiles.

“We’re profiling American pedophiles who have fled to other countries. Westerners go over there primarily to have sex with small children, 6-8 year old boys and girls,” Walsh told Pop Tarts. “I took a small crew with me and went undercover with a British cop and infiltrated brothel nightclubs. It was really heartbreaking to see it.”

Walsh said that within two minutes of being in a Cambodian bar, they were approached by a madam offering them very young children, and believes audiences will be shocked at how easy and how prevalent it is that Westerners involve themselves in such acts.

“It is our garbage that goes to Cambodia and preys on these young children. It is our garbage from America, England, the West that goes to the East and preys upon their poverty,” he said. “People are going to be surprised about how easy it is to do, and how many Westerners fly there just to solicit and have sex with children.”

The episode also provides a rare exploration of a Cambodian prison, and an interview with two British men arrested for their illicit involvement with young children.

“They [the British prisoners] were very arrogant and blaming society for getting caught. There is also this concept that people can pay off the police or even the judges if they get caught,” Walsh explained.

But among the devastation, the veteran TV host was overcome by the strength of one woman in particular, Somaly Mam, a tireless advocate who has dedicated her life to rescuing Cambodia’s children from the sex trade. A sex-crime victim as a child, Mam operates a center for other victimized children, offering them hope for the future.

“Somaly Mam herself had been kidnapped and forced into sex trade when she was 14; now she goes and rescues the poor children one at a time, at great risk to herself. In fact her own 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped by pimps and brutally sexually assaulted, but this didn’t deter her,” Walsh continued. “She is still going in and trying to save these boys and girls from a life of prostitution.”

Walsh also believes it is in our nation’s best interest to assist in tracking down the American pedophiles profiled on the broadcast.

“The number one thing is awareness. These guys will go over there and come back and function as pediatricians, scout masters, school teachers. We need to tell our officials,” he added. “People may ask ‘why should what’s happening in Cambodia affect me?’ Well, the guys that go over there and molest Cambodian kids come back and molest American kids. I’ve been to Haiti, Katrina, Ground Zero and seen some rough things… but the trip to Cambodia was really, really life-changing.”

Somaly Mam, activist against human sex trafficking, visits Stanford

Somaly Mam, former child sex slave and human rights advocate, speaks to the audience at the WCC Wednesday night. (FRANCISCA GILMORE/The Stanford Daily)

Thursday, November 11th, 2010
By Marianne LeVine
The Stanford Daily (Stanford U., USA)

On Wednesday, Somaly Mam, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, spoke out at the Women’s Community Center against human sex trafficking, drawing on personal experience as well as a lifetime spent combating the practice’s spread.

At a young age, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by a man pretending to be her grandfather. After witnessing the murder of her best friend, Mam escaped the brothel. In 1996, she established the Cambodian non-profit organization Agir Pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire (AFESIP), dedicated to saving young girls sold into sexual slavery. The victims range in age from 4 to 12, and the organization has rescued more than 6,000 young women since its founding.

In 2007, the Somaly Mam Foundation was established by two Americans to advocate for the victims of sexual trafficking and allow their voices to be heard in the world community.

Viviana Arcia ’13, the chair of women’s issues for ASSU and one of the event’s organizers, says Mam understands the importance of the survivor’s perspective.

“She’s a representative of victim-centered activism…that is, letting survivors choose their own path and method of healing, which sadly many activists working with abused women do not do,” Arcia said. “They [the survivors] are the experts, they are the only ones that truly understand their situation and Mam is conscious of the fact that these girls need to be viewed and treated as autonomous people who have agency.”

The event began with the performance of the traditional Cambodian blessing dance. The five dancers were victims of sex trafficking, and began to cry as they recounted their difficult pasts.

“I am happy to meet you all. I never thought today was possible,” said one performer through a translator. “I look at you like brothers and sisters that care about me. I have a father that is despicable and I was sold by my own sister so I never felt love.”

Sex trafficking is not limited to Cambodia. Bill Livermore, the CEO and the executive director of the Somaly Mam Foundation, spoke on the global nature of the problem.

“The UN estimates 12.5 million slaves in the world today,” he said, adding that 17,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year.

“This is a problem of historical proportions,” he said. “It’s devastating. $32 billion is made in slavery. It is the second most profitable crime after drugs.”

Livermore described the two main functions of the Somaly Mam Foundation: empowering survivors and ensuring that a strict rule of law is enforced.

The Somaly Mam Foundation helps to fund shelters throughout Cambodia and encourages victim rehabilitation through dance therapy.

The Voices for Change program, one program of the Foundation in which survivors help counsel recent victims, has also been successful. According to Livermore, the program has encouraged more women in brothels to seek assistance. Intake rates at Cambodian shelters have increased from 60 percent to 90 percent within the past two years. Mam said the victims gain a sense of solidarity that helps them recover.

“What I needed when I was young was a mother,” Mam said. “But I didn’t have a mother. My life started bad. It’s like all of their lives. We had been born without parents, without love. We were born in very bad luck.”

The Somaly Mam Foundation encourages its members to voice their opinions about the center.

“I always believe the idea comes from the center,” Mam said. “Every year we have the girls get together. They tell us what they want the center to do. They are not soft at all. Empower the survivor. Don’t start tomorrow. Start now.”

Contact Marianne LeVine at mlevine2@stanford.edu.

John Walsh Goes Undercover on America's Most Wanted

Wednesday, 10 Nov 2010
Fox News (USA)

This November, America's Most Wanted will be doing some big stories about how westerners go to Asia to have sex with children. In Cambodia, John Walsh went undercover in a bar where underage girls were being pimped out. The show also visited Somaly Mams Recovery Center where brothel rescued girls are rehabilitated. John Walsh has more.

Cambodian sex trafficking victim tells her story

June 23, 2010
ABC Radio Australia

Somaly Mam's autobiography is a global best-seller but she gets no pleasure from her story, she tells it because she has to. Somaly Mam escaped from being sold into sex-trafficking in Cambodia, and now campaigns to save women like herself. This week she's visiting Australia.

Presenter: Matt Abud
Speakers: Somaly Mam, Author The Road of Lost Innocence and founder, Somaly Mam Foundation; Tanya Plibersek, Australian Minister for the Status of Women; Stephanie Lorenzo, Founder, Futures Project

Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)

ABUD: Somaly Mam's parents disappeared in the violence of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime. She grew up in the forest, and when only nine years old she was sold into sex trafficking by a man she called 'Grandfather'.

It's a story that's all too common. Some estimates say that one in every forty Cambodian women are sold into prostitution. Many of them are under ten years old.

Somaly Mam is anything but usual. After years in the sex trade she managed to flee. In the face of violence in the brothel where she worked, escape was an act of desperation. She didn't expect to survive - and that's when she started to tape-record her story, just in case.

SOMALY MAM: I never make a decision to write a book and write a story because that is hard story. So I say that I'm dying so I take a tape and then I recorded three days. And then I send it to France and I tell them if I'm die they have to publishing because I want to let the people know what is the victim life mean everyday in the brothel

ABUD: Her book, The Road of Lost Innocence, is a simple and powerful account that has won high praise. She says she never expected to write it - and hasn't even read a page since, because it's so painful. But she realised other people needed to hear the story.

Contacts in France helped her escape there. But eventually she decided to return to Cambodia, and help girls and women like herself. She established the Somaly Mam Foundation. Now she runs three shelters which have supported thousands of former sex workers escaping the trade, and trained them for other employment.

It's not easy. Outreach teams meet the sex workers through safe-sex campaigns and services. If they get information about girls being sold, they contact the police for action.

The conditions the women and girls face in brothels are tough and dangerous - and sometimes fatal, because of either physical abuse or HIV-AIDS.

SOMALY MAM: First of all you know they are quite young, they have been raped and then beaten and hitting by the pimps. Some of them they have been killed and die in the brothel They can be HIV-AIDS, traumatised that is kill the girls.

ABUD: There's a lot of money in sex trafficking, and a lot of corrupt interests - and Somaly Mam has had her fair share of threats to burn her house or kidnap her child, for trying to create change.

She's visiting Australia this week to promote awareness of sex trafficking. The itinerary included meeting the Federal Minister on the Status of Women Tanya Plibersek.

PLIBERSEK: I think it's incredibly important for Australians to hear about Somaly's experiences. It's also very important for Australian tourists who are thinking about engaging in sex tourism to hear about the abuse and exploitation, to understand that this is not something that you can engage in carefree when you're on holidays and there are no consequences.

ABUD: Ms. Plibersek says recent legislation makes it easier to protect victims of sex trafficking in Australia - and to prosecute Australians who commit offences overseas.

Somaly Mam is hosted by Project Futures - a new organisation that raises funds for her shelters in Cambodia.

Stephanie Lorenzo founded Project Futures after visiting the shelters .

LORENZO: Once you meet the survivors they're so young, I'm twenty-four years old, a lot of these girls have been sold at twelve or thirteen and some even seven. So you look at these girls, you just see that their soul and their spirit how it's been lifted by being in the centre and lifted by Somaly being their mother and someone actually giving them love. You know it's something that you can't turn your back on.

ABUD: Project Futures is taking 27 cyclists from Australia and the United States to Cambodia, as part of an annual fundraising effort, which has already reached one hundred thousand dollars this year.

Ms. Lorenzo says her organisation aims to get young people involved as early as possible in combating sex trafficking.

And Somaly Mam is very clear on the messages she wants to tell Australia's youth - to value your own good fortune, and fight to help others.

SOMALY MAM:I want to tell them that, 'how lucky you are to be born in Australia, take the mother around you, take the love around you'. So I just want to tell them that participating to stand up and fight again, because the traffic is happen around the world.

Former sex slave fights illegal trade

"Girls are taught only shame and ignorance about their bodies and men have their first sexual experience in brothels. Rape is the only thing they know." Photo: AFP

June 22, 2010
AAP

Somaly Mam emerged from a life of sex slavery in Cambodia to become a champion of women's rights and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people on the planet.

Abandoned by her parents, Mam was raped at 12, forced to marry at 14 and then sold into prostitution.

She suffered years of abuse before escaping with the help of a Medicin Sans Frontieres worker, whom she later married.

Mam has never had any formal schooling, yet she now speaks five languages.

She has become a tireless activist heading two organisations which fight sexual slavery, and has received international humanitarian awards.

Mam spoke about her extraordinary life during her first visit to Australia, in between a flurry of book signings, public lectures and meetings with politicians.

Her autobiography, The Road of Lost Innocence, has been reprinted many times.

It is a grim story of abuse - young lives broken by rape, torture and starvation together with betrayal by the very people who should have protected their own children.

Poverty also causes Cambodian families to sell their daughters into prostitution.

Mam says her story is symptomatic of a country with a long history of treating females worse than livestock.

"Cambodian society is about violence and submission," she told AAP.

"That smile people associate with gentle Cambodian women is a lie.

"It's always been like that. Women have been beaten slaves since before the Khmer Rouge, who killed any compassion there was.

"Although the situation is changing, 30 years later Cambodian society is still struggling. People only care about themselves."

Cambodians are a silent people, Mam says, and women's suffering is also endured in silence, compounded by a lack of education in all spheres.

"Girls are taught only shame and ignorance about their bodies and men have their first sexual experience in brothels. Rape is the only thing they know."

Up to 70 per cent of brothel clients are Cambodian men and the remaining 30 per cent are foreigners including paedophiles targeting children, she says.

Although Mam was able to escape her past by living in France for a while with her French husband Pierre, she continues to be haunted by nightmares and post-traumatic stress.

Mam says she felt driven to rescue girls like herself. Together with Pierre she started saving victims of sexual slavery in Cambodia even though police and corrupt politicians were as bad as the pimps and clients who wanted her gone.

She was one of the founding members of AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances), which has rescued and rehabilitated over 4000 women since 1996.

Now divorced, Mam says her traumatic past makes it impossible for her to be in a relationship.

But becoming a mother helped her feel love for the first time.

Mam has three children aged 18, 14 and eight. The oldest girl, Ning, is her sister's daughter whom she adopted.

"I'm not a gentle girl and life has been a fight, but out of this, and becoming a mother, came love."

The motherly love she discovered now fuels her mission in Cambodia, where she lives, to maintain three shelters for rescued sex slaves where their dignity is rebuilt through nurturing and education.

"It takes five minutes to rescue a girl and then the hard work starts," she says.

"First give them love until they feel it and they feel safe. Prove to them they can trust, and then start building life skills."

Bill Livermore, the US head of the Somaly Mam Foundation, says a key to ending trafficking is empowering women.

"Access to education, law and the economy is a must. If you take 50 per cent of the population out of those areas, countries do not thrive. Cambodia is very poor".

Livermore also advocates embarrassing governments who tolerate the sex slavery scourge "because governments won't change unless they are embarrassed to change".

He says the rehabilitation success rate in Cambodia soared after survivors were encouraged to rescue other girls.

"It went up from 65 per cent to 90 per cent because they were able to bond with the prostitutes and that's the kind of skill that a PhD from Harvard will never give you," he says.

The foundation was created in the US in 2007 and has a combination of corporate and private funding - not a cent comes from the United Nations or any government body.

Mam's high international profile helps, although old enemies remain. There have been threats on her life and she has a driver and a full-time bodyguard.

"If they kill me, there will be many more to take my place," she says.

SEX SLAVERY: THE FACTS

• One in 40 Cambodian girls is sold into sexual slavery
• Human trafficking is the second-largest organised crime in the world, even bigger than the drugs trade
• 2-4 million women and girls will be sold into prostitution worldwide over the next 12 months
• Over a million will be small children
• Some girls will be sold for as little as $US10 and will be as young as five
• Profits from sexual slavery are estimated at up to $US12 billion annually

Sources: US State Department, UNICEF, UN Office of Drugs and Crime
The Road of Lost Innocence, by Somaly Mam, is published by Virago Press.
For more info go to www.somaly.org and www.projectfutures.com

Brilliant Film Premiers Monday in NYC, Offering Solution to Global Child Exploitation

June 19, 2010
Jim Luce
Huffington Post

Not often does a filmmaker present both an untenable social problem - and its solution. Not often is its filmmaker an artist as well as a banker and a lawyer. Meet Guy Jacobson through whose eyes in the film Redlight we meet two remarkable women opposed to childhood sexual slavery in Cambodia. One, the head of the opposition party there, and the other a woman who escaped the brothels to dedicate her life to freeing others. I sat down this week with Guy to hear more about the opening of his film Redlight, produced and narrated by UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Lucy Liu.

The film "Redlight" is produced and narrated by UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Lucy Liu.

Having built a reputation of orphan care around the world known as Orphans International Worldwide (OIWW), and being a new friend of Cambodian legend, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Mu Sochua, I am familiar with the plight of sexually abused children. But the staggering figure of 2.5 million children aged 18 months to 18 years exploited for their young bodies made my skin crawl. They can be raped 20 - 30 times a day, and up to half of them will die from shock, torture, drugs, and/or AIDS.

The film "Holly" production shot of brothel room. Photographer: Elkana Jacobson.

Two women are featured in the film, grassroots activist Somaly Mam and politician Mu Sochua. Filmed over a four year period, the incredibly moving Redlight focuses on the personal stories of the victims and two remarkable advocates for change in a nation that lived through the Killing Fields. Both women have since been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize and won other numerous human rights awards around the world. See the film's trailer on Vimeo.

This powerful, must-see film opens in New York City this Monday night, June 21, with a red carpet affair, followed by a VIP reception featuring celebrity guests. Tickets are also available to the general public.

Expected guests for the star-studded event include Ambassador Mark Lagon, Alyse Nelson, president and C.E.O. of Vital Voices, Cecilia Attias, Richard Attias, producer of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Global C.E.O. Andrew Prozes of LexisNexis. A heavy media turnout is anticipated.

The Honorary Host Committee includes Congresswoman Congressmember Carolyn B. Maloney, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, Lauren Bush, and Abigail Disney, among others. The event is sponsored in part by LexisNexis.


This special evening will be a multi-pronged event with two screenings offered. The official World Premiere Red Carpet Screening with limited tickets open to the public opens at 6pm. VIP guests will join the VIP reception and Q&A at the CUE Art Gallery, 511 West 25th Street. All other guests are invited to a one-hour open bar after-party from 9:30pm at the Juliet Supper Club, located at 539 West 21st Street.

Producers Adi Ezroni and Guy Jacobson at "Holly" premier in 2007. Photo: Madhu Dhas.

The General Public Red Carpet Screening is scheduled for 9:00pm, with an after-party also at the Juliet Supper Club. Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A session featuring, M.P. Mu Sochua, UNICEF's Global Chief of Child Protection Dr. Susan Bissell, and filmmakers Guy Jacobson and Israeli actress Adi Ezroni, both of whom won the prestigious U.S. State Department's Global Hero Award for their work.

Ron Livingston stars as Patrick, an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts living in Cambodia for years, when he encounters Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute in the feature film Holly, a captivating, touching and emotional experience, that highlights the growing international issue of human trafficking. Photo: Elkana Jacobson.

This film is the second in Guy's trilogy, known as the K11 Project. Holly was the first in 2007, the story of a 12-year old prostitute who captures the jaded heart of a foreigner living in Cambodia who in turn goes out of his way to rescue her from the criminal element that controls her. This filmed premiered at the United Nations, with honorary committee members including Susan Sarandon and Hillary Clinton. All three films benefit from Guy's undercover work in Cambodian brothels, using espionage equipment and secret cameras to research the plight of child trafficking victims.

Filmmaker, banker and lawyer Guy Jacobson, standing, with his team in Battambang, Cambodia.

To make Redlight in Cambodia, where he was challenging the underground that profit off the lives of children, Guy had to surround himself with 40 bodyguards armed with automatic weapons. As Lucy Liu states in the film, the brothels are powerful and notoriously violent. "I come from Israel originally. I know how to take care of myself," Guy shrugged with a smile. At one point, Interpol contacted Guy to warn him to flee the country because the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cambodian mafia had hits taken out on his life.

In 2000, Guy left the intersection of investment banking and law here in NYC to spend two years travelling the world. In Phnom Penh he walked down one street where he was surrounded by a large group of girls competing to offer his sexual favors in exchange for cash. Just as my first visit to an orphanage 'warehouse' led to my epiphany, Guy's experience with these girls led to his life commitment to end the plight of red light children, leading him to found an organization to help end exploitation by the same name.

Children in Cambodia fishing villages, as children anywhere in the world, can be in danger.

Guy's cutting-edge strategy to end the sexual exploitation of children is to work with major law firms around the world s, and focus on filing civil suits on behalf of a victim against an exploiter in each city, sending a message of deterrence across oceans like a Tsunami. "This does not end exploitation on its own, but sends a chill down the spines of the exploiters." Guy told me. If it scared only 10%, it would save 250,000 children. "Governments in many countries are not strong enough to fight this scourge effectively. We need to fight for the children ourselves, in the civil courts and arena of public opinion."

The Redlight Children Campaign originally aimed at pressuring governments to enact or amend legislation to address this issue more effectively and allocate more resources towards enforcement of laws. This has proven to be difficult. Now, in addition to the original strategy, Guy wants to make it more difficult and costly for perpetrators to sexually abuse children. Redlight Children has partnered with LexisNexis to create both an international case law database for trafficking, and a trafficking offenders database to assist lawmakers and prosecutors.

According to RedLightChildren.org:

Every single day children are kidnapped or stolen and forced into the global, multi-billion dollar sex industry. Interpol estimates that this trafficking of children and young women is the third largest international criminal activity.

Its scope is shocking. According to UNICEF, over two million children are involved -- from kids around the world who are kidnapped from their families to children victimized on the internet via community sites and chatrooms.

To effectively counter the violent mobs who control child exploitation around the world, Guy turned to his artistic past and decided to incorporate film with law and finance. He began Priority Films. He understood that to solve a problem, he had to first bring people to the realization that such a problem existed. He chose to do this through film, using the law and financial pressure to provide a cutting-edge solution. His film company is a cutting edge 'micro studio' with a focus on low budget, high quality, commercial films. He has created a strong grassroots approach to film, producing the K11 Project, the most comprehensive film project about child trafficking and child prostitution to date.

At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves: are our world's children safe?

Human trafficking is a brutal and horrific reality. I hope you will support efforts in the fight against this global epidemic. Proceeds from this important event will benefit RedLight Children and Restore NYC, two not for profit organizations both working tirelessly to end slavery and child exploitation.

For further issues, facts and the rule of law, see LexisNexis website.
To buy the DVD, go to Priority Films website.

Myrna Raffkind: Cambodian tells gripping story

Sunday, May 9, 2010
Myrna Raffkind
Amarillo.com (Texas, USA)

Once in a while we read a book that jolts us out of our comfort zone and literally opens our eyes to the many benefits, rights, and privileges we have as a result of living in the United States of America. Such was the experience I encountered when reading Somali Mam's book, "The Road of Lost Innocence."

Somali Mam grew up in Cambodia and her book chronicles her life from early childhood until adulthood. She was abandoned by her parents, grew up as a child of the forest, and sold into sexual slavery at age 12. She lived in brothels until she was in her early 20s, and at this time married a diplomat who took her to France.

Somali Mam was not able to acclimate herself to life in Europe and returned to her native Cambodia to do whatever she could to eliminate the business of brothels and trafficking of sex slaves. She started a foundation dedicated to protesting and has since devoted her time to making the world aware of the horrors the young Cambodian women experience when they are sold as sex slaves.

Undoubtedly all of us in this country can recall incidents where people are treated unfairly and/or even tortured. And yes, most of us know or have heard about incidents where parents have even gained monetarily by forcing their children to engage in illegal or immoral acts. Yet, what's different in America as contrasted to a country such as Cambodia is the institutionalization of sex trafficking and the sanctioning of this practice by government. Fortunately in America, we not only have laws that protect against inhumane practices such as selling children into slavery but we also have a system for enforcing these laws and punishing their offenders.

And yet, what many have forgotten or fail to realize is that in our blessed country rights for women and minority groups have not always been such a vital part of our government. They came only after years of struggle and overcoming resistance and lives were lost in the process.

For example, even though America was founded on the principle of equal rights for all, it was not until 1865 and the passage of the 14th Amendment that blacks were freed from slavery. Fifty-five years passed before the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was signed into law in 1920. The Civil Rights Act that barred discrimination in employment on the basis of race and sex was not passed until 1964 and in some states the use of contraceptives by married couples was prohibited until 1965.

There are times when I question the misuse and even abuse of some of the rights we enjoy as citizens. I become angry when I read about members of the Westboro Baptist church disrupting funerals with their protests of gays and lesbians. I experience fear when I hear about the stockpiling of weapons by militia groups and I am dismayed when I hear hecklers at political rallies denounce politicians whose views I favor and support. Yet, at the same time, I realize that these signs of protest are but a small price to pay for freedom of speech, assembly or the right to bear arms.

Those who have grown up and live in Cambodia or other countries ruled by tyranny have no safeguards for human rights.

They must fear for their lives when they speak out or protest against inhumane and immoral practices such as selling children to brothels. In order to institute change they must rely on the support of others who live in free countries and who are willing to advocate for their causes.
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Somali Mam will be speaking later this year on the WTAMU campus at Freshman Convocation. She is coming to WTAMU as part of the Readership WT Program, the same program that brought to campus Elie Weisel (Holocaust survivor and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize) in 2007; Valentino Deng (one of the lost boys of Sudan), in 2008, and Khaled Husseini (author of "The Kite Runner") in 2009.

In speaking to the students and youth, these authors have told of genocide, cruelty, and torture imposed in their native countries by corrupt regimes and despotic leaders.

Hearing their stories, the young people of today and the leaders of tomorrow cannot help but have a greater understanding and appreciation of the value and meaning of freedom.

Myrna Raffkind is a retired West Texas A&M University faculty member. She lives in Amarillo.

Somaly Mam's life by Futures News