Senhoa: A Refuge for Victims of Sex Trafficking

07/10/2012
By Clarissa Burt
Co-written by Brooke Smith
Huffington Post

Human trafficking has grown to become a large and perilous problem worldwide. The United Nations estimates that 700,000 to 4 million women and children worldwide are trafficked every year. Women everywhere, especially in poverty-stricken areas, are illegally being sold by organized crime units for purposes of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Cambodia is one place in particular where a remarkable organization, Senhoa, extends every effort to offer at-risk girls an alternative route by teaching them valuable skills that they can use to create a new and improved way of life. I discovered from Senhoa the story of a young Cambodian woman who I will call Mai.

At 16, Mai was training to become a tour guide when her boss took advantage of her, raped her and dropped her off in a brothel. She was subsequently sold to eight men in the following two days. The last man to abuse Mai deemed her unfit to fulfill his needs and dropped her off in a street in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Fortunately, Mai's family was able to call on Senhoa and count on them to provide the safety and education that Mai desperately needed. After only two years, Mai is now a professional jewelry maker. This young woman's story was so intriguing that I contacted Senhoa to learn more about how they operate.

Exclusive: Travel to Cambodia with Shay Mitchell! [-Somaly Mam foundation]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMvwbpwK1p8

Cambodian kids and sex trafficking

Cambodian village has disturbing reputation for child sex slavery

These two Vietnamese girls, aged eight and 10, were found after a raid on a brothel in the Cambodian village of Svay Pak, near Phnom Penh. --REUTERS

Sun October 23, 2011
By Sara Sidner, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• One former sex slave says she was 5 or 6 years old when she was approached by a man
• "No one could help me," she says
• Don Brewster and his wife operate a rehab center for child sex slaves
• "Just yesterday we rescued a 5-year-old girl," Brewster says

SVAY PAK, Cambodia (CNN) -- Svay Pak has a disturbing reputation. The village outside Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is known as a place where little girls are openly sold to foreign predators looking for sex.

One of the girls who was sold into the sex trade told CNN that before she could read she was working in a brothel.

"I was about 5 or 6 years old," she said. "The first man said to me, 'I want to have sex with you.' At the time I didn't know what to do. No one could help me."

Dozens of girls have had the same experience in her neighborhood.

Remember Nhu: Working to end child sex trade

Carl and Laurie Ralston with Nhu, the Thai girl that they helped save from the child sex trade. The Ralstons were in DL this week to share their story.

Several years ago, Carl Ralston was in Thailand when he heard about Nhu, a 12-year-old girl that had been sold into the sex trade world. It was the first time he had even heard of child sex trafficking, and he is working now to make sure it’s the last.

September 23, 2011

By: Pippi Mayfield, 

Detroit Lakes-Online 

Several years ago, Carl Ralston was in Thailand when he heard about Nhu, a 12-year-old girl that had been sold into the sex trade world. It was the first time he had even heard of child sex trafficking, and he is working now to make sure it’s the last.

That was in November of 2003, and Ralston, who is originally from Ohio but now travels 10 months out of the year, began to pray that he could make a difference.

He said God spoke to him, “Remember Nhu,” and a month later, Rolstad promised to find Nhu and work as long as it took to end the child sex trade industry.

Former RUC chief exposes child sex tourism on US TV

Jim Gamble

Monday, 15 November 2010
Belfast Telegraph (Ireland)

The former head of Special Branch in Belfast and the host of US TV show America's Most Wanted posed as paedophiles to investigate the sex trafficking of Cambodian youngsters.

Jim Gamble, ex-chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), and John Walsh said they were shocked when they went into a Cambodian bar where there were 50 to 60 girls.

“Within two minutes a madam came up to us and said ‘What are you looking for?' and Jim said, ‘We're looking for young girls'. She brought over three or four girls that were (about) 12 or 13 years old — very, very young,” said Mr Walsh.

Mr Gamble told her they wanted younger girls, Mr Walsh said.

He said the woman replied: “What do you want? We have six and seven-year-old boys and girls. I can arrange that off-premises.”

Mr Walsh said the experience was “disgusting and heartbreaking.”

He said Western paedophiles from the US, Britain and Germany travelled east to Cambodia as international sex tourists. He said his show chose Cambodia because it was cheap to buy a sex slave there.

“I saw many Western men that had gone there, not to go to the Buddhist temples, not to go to look at beaches, not to do anything at all but to molest and have sex with children. It's wrong, it's illegal and it has to change,” Mr Walsh said.

He said the episode would be a “tough show to watch” but it was important to expose the reality that children were sexually assaulted by predators — many of whom were from the US.

So far the show has captured 1,135 criminals in its 24 seasons.

America's Most Wanted is shown on primetime on Saturday nights in the US on Fox.

Senior police officer Mr Gamble, the former head of Northern Ireland's anti-terror unit, resigned from Ceop in October over the government's decision to make it part of the National Crime Agency.

No Longer a Pedophile’s Haven

An American man charged with child-sex offenses hides his face as he arrives at court in Phnom Penh in 2003. (Tang Chhin / AFP-Getty Images)

A crackdown in Cambodia removes impunity for those who prey on children.

November 16, 2010
By Brendan Brady
Newsweek

Cambodia’s pedophile saga has provided no shortage of headlines in recent months. A Russian investor convicted of buying sex with 17 girls as young as 6 years old had his prison sentence reduced from 17 years to eight, with a chance for early release. A Swede suspected of sexually abusing children was recorded on tape by Swedish journalists, bragging about how easy it would be to bribe his judge for a shortened sentence. And another Brit, who in 2005 went free despite overwhelming evidence that he molested children, is now back in court, having returned to Cambodia seemingly undeterred by the legal system.

But these ignominious developments are actually an improvement over years past. Rewind a decade, and disgraced British glam rocker Gary Glitter led a cast of foreign pedophiles whose presence in Cambodia made the impoverished Southeast Asian country infamous as a refuge for child-sex offenders. Those were days when children were openly sold for sex in Phnom Penh’s Svay Pak district and NGO raids on child brothels were invariably foiled by corrupt police on the take. Lax law enforcement and pervasive local demand for prostitution have long made Southeast Asia a destination for sex tourists of all stripes—and in Cambodia, in particular, the social, economic, and legal foundations that militate against the sexual exploitation of children were shattered by years of debilitating rule and civil strife.

Today, the likes of Glitter no longer can break the law with impunity in Cambodia. Following pressure from local activists as well as the United States, Australia, and some European countries, Cambodia launched a campaign in 2003 to fight its reputation as a pedophile’s carefree playground. By most accounts, the effort has achieved results. Now, articles about arrests of North American and European nationals pepper the pages of the local press. The crackdown and accompanying PR campaign helped lift Cambodia from the gutter of the U.S. human-trafficking watchlist, making the donor-dependent country eligible for a greater variety of direct aid.

“For Western pedophiles, Cambodia is no longer a safe haven,” says Samleang Seila, the head of the local child-protection group Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE). The change is evidenced by a rising number of arrests for “debauchery” and “indecent acts,” which grew from just eight in 2003 to 36 last year, according to APLE. The organization tracks sex tourists, gathers evidence against them and hands their cases over to local police. That’s when things can easily unravel: inexperienced and under-resourced, Cambodia’s police and judiciary are prone to corruption and poor implementation of the law. But despite its shaky foundation, the legal system has made strides, says Joerg Langelotz, of APLE. Case in point: the same judge in the town of Siem Reap who a year and a half ago declined to deliberate on a child-molestation charge because the alleged abuse didn’t exceed fondling has now agreed to hear the case. “There is less complacency and more commitment,” says Langelotz.

As policing improves, Western perpetrators are taking greater cover. In two different arrests involving British men in the past few months, the suspects had founded child-care NGOs that now appear to have been fronts for them to prey on children. Kao Thea, the head of Phnom Penh’s anti–human trafficking and juvenile-protection division, is confident his police officers can stay ahead of the curve. “Now we can stop sexual abuse of children from foreigners who come to Cambodia because we are much more experienced than we were before,” he says. That may be true, but rights groups say a greater scourge has been largely undeterred by the crackdown: a thriving child-sex market fueled by locals.

Among the 141 arrests for “debauchery” and “indecent acts” in Cambodia since 2003, only 37 of the suspects were Cambodian and just 19 were men from other Asian countries, according to APLE. And yet, Western men represent only a minuscule fraction of the population in Cambodia that is sexually exploiting children. According to a report released last month by the juvenile-protection NGO, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Abuse and Trafficking), the vast majority of former child sex workers say their clients were local men. It may not seem like much of a revelation given the disparity in numbers between Western and local men but, as ECPAT points out, the findings run contrary to “the usually held assumption that pedophilia is a Western problem.”

“Cambodian men prefer beautiful, fair-skinned, and younger-looking sex workers—basically minors,” Chin Chanveasna, head of ECPAT’s Cambodia office, told a conference attended by government and NGO officials in October, adding that sexual exploitation of children by locals is overlooked because of a single-minded focus on targeting Western men. Says Steve Morrish, executive director of SISHA, an NGO that investigates human trafficking: “A lot of the Cambodian men I speak with, they want the young ones and they don’t see it as anything to hide.” Moreover, in Cambodian culture, it is often the reputation of the victim, rather than of the perpetrator, that is blighted. According to a report on Cambodia by Amnesty International released earlier this year, girls who are sexually abused often become outcasts in their community, while convicted offenders face little stigma.

Given the obstacles to changing such widely held attitudes, it’s not surprising the government has targeted Western men, whose crimes are more conspicuous. But, says, Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, “Western pedophiles are the low-hanging fruit. Now should come the climb up the tree to catch local sexual abusers of children.”

Mu Sochua talks about the film "Relight"

Click here to watch the video on Minuteman News Center

Video Clips from AMW On the Road Cambodia

NGOs play crucial role in rescuing Cambodian child sex workers

September 15, 2010
ABC Radio Australia

Four young Cambodian girls are in the care of Thai social services are being rescued from a brothel in the border town of Aranyaprathet over the weekend.

The girls were aged just 14 and 15 and were reportedly being kept in locked rooms with bars over the windows. That was until an Australian-based group known as Grey Man got word of their plight, gathered some evidence and tipped off local authorities. Non governmental organisations carry out hundreds of these so-called "rescues" of child sex workers every year.

Presenter: Helene Hofman
Speakers: 'John Curtis', President, Grey Man; Patchareeboom Sakulpitakphon, Program Officer for combatting child sex trafficking and child sex tourism, ECPAT International, Christian Guth, Law Enforcement Advisor, Ministry of the Interior (Cambodia)

Patchareeboom Sakulpitakphon, program officer for combatting child sex trafficking and child sex tourism with ECPAT International says that's because many groups don't fully understand the underlying issues.

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

HOFMAN: It's almost impossible to gather accurate figures, but according to the United Nations and anti-trafficking groups working on the ground, anywhere between 100-thousand and 200-thousand children are trafficked every year, in Southeast Asia alone.

Some are rounded up for cheap labour, but about half - it's thought - are forced into the sex industry.

That was the case with the four teenage Cambodian girls rescued from a brothel just a kilometre across the Thai border this weekend.

Trafficking first emerged as a major problem for Cambodia back in the 1990s and has grown steadily as an internal and cross-border problem ever since.

The extent of the problem has led to numerous international organisations and non-governmental organisations like Grey Man moving in.

Its president, who goes by the pseudonym 'John Curtis', says there are many difference types of groups working in Cambodia, and some are more useful than others.

CURTIS: I think Cambodia's probably got more NGOs than any other country in the world and to a degree they're probably all fighting a little bit to find people to rescue. Yes, they are helpful in that they will often place these girls into education and that but I think 87 per cent of those involved in anti-trafficking are religious groups and many of these groups they do have an underlying compulsion to convert these kids unfortunately, but I suppose better that than being stuck in a brothel.

HOFMAN: Grey Man is made up mostly of former members of the Australian police force and Special Service Air Service regiment and has rescued 108 child sex workers in the last three years.

Of those, about 60 per cent of those have stayed out of the sex industry. The other 40 per cent, often with nowhere else to go, have gone back.

Grey Man and many of the other anti-trafficking groups organise re-integreation projects and training to help the victims find an alternative role in society.

But it hasn't been enough to stop hundreds of rescued victims simply slipping through the cracks and back into the industry.

SAKULPITAKPHON: I have to give credit to the Cambodian goverment that in the past couple of years they have really taken the time and effort to create a stronger legal framework; improve collaborations between government officals, law enforcement and NGOs at the ground level. The police by themselves would have a difficult time getting all the information. As a member of an international NGO I think the work of NGOs is of great importance but I think you have to understand too that there are many types of NGOs.

HOFMAN: Sure, and by different types you mean there are smaller ones that might not adhere to the procedures in the same way that you might?

SAKULPITAKPHON: Exactly, because I think each organisation has their own capacity and understanding of issue because sometimes a lot of people have great intentions but if they don't understand what's going on or don't have the proper guidance and guidelines than they could still tumble and have mistakes.

HOFMAN: The Cambodian government stepped-up its efforts to limit these mistakes and tackle the issue more effectively around the year 2000.

However, the number of cases of child sex trafficking is still on the increase.

Christian Guth, a law enforcement advisor who works with the Cambodian Ministry of the Interior and anti-child-trafficking agencies, says there are many reasons for this, ranging from persistant poverty to the complexity of prosecuting offenders.

GUTH: These NGOs are doing very good work, because they are close to the community and they are reporting cases to the police so if things can be successful for the future here. If things can progress it's because there is, first point, strong commitment; second point: people who accept to be trained to make things going forward as with the police this is the case and third thing: international support given. Without this support I think it would be very difficult.

HOFMAN: And the Cambodian General Commissioner has just approved a new set of police guidelines on conducting rescue operations and arresting offenders.

It will be presented to members of the police force next week.

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.

In Cambodia, American Evangelicals Fight to End Child Sex Trafficking

Christian Volunteer: 'There Is a Deep Fulfillment in Laying Your Life Down for Somebody Else'

By DAN HARRIS, ALMIN KARAMEHMEDOVIC, AUDE SOICHET and SIDNEY WRIGHT IV
ABC News (USA)

SVAY PAK, Cambodia, March 21, 2010 — Clay Butler, a 27-year-old evangelical Christian from California, points to a group of children playing in the street and said, "I know kids in that group who are being trafficked. I know the situations, I know the brothels that they're in."

Butler runs a community center in the village of Svay Pak, the epicenter of Cambodia's raging child sex trafficking epidemic. It's a place where, on any given night, many of the children will be sold -- by their own parents -- for sex with strangers.

He is one of many American Christians who have come to this impoverished, war-ravaged country to protect some of the world's most vulnerable children.

"I think the most exciting part of Christianity is living it out," Butler said. "This stuff is not fun at all, but there is a deep fulfillment in laying your life down for somebody else."

Other Americans Christians are practicing an even more daring version of their faith. A group called the International Justice Mission regularly sends undercover agents into the brothels to gather video evidence. The group then works with local police to bust suspected sex tourists, oftentimes American men.

They also rescue child sex slaves like Bella, a 15-year-old who says she was forced by pimps to have sex every day.

Bella was sold into slavery by her mother. In Cambodia, it can be astonishingly easy to buy a child from the family. During a recent visit to Cambodia, ABC News was able to negotiate -- in broad daylight -- with the mother of a 15-year-old girl. The mother said she was willing to sell her daughter to a foreigner for marriage.

When asked how much it would cost, the mother answered, through a translator, "It's up to you."

In response to a question about whether her daughter had been with another man before, she said, "No, no, no. If you don't trust you can take her to the hospital& for a medical examination."

So why is it so easy to buy a child on the streets of Cambodia? Poverty is one explanation, but some Christians say the ghosts of history play a role.

Pastor Has Seen Cambodian Child Sold to Pay for Superficial Items

Cambodia endured a massive genocide in the 1970s, during which children were forced to spy on and even execute their parents -- and the educated and religious communities were nearly wiped out.

Pastor Don Brewster, who runs a shelter for former child sex slaves and works with Clay Butler, said he believes that Cambodia now suffers from a moral vacuum.

"These families will take a loan to buy a TV which they can never pay," Brewster said. "They can't feed themselves, never mind buy a TV, but they know, 'Hey, I've got my ace in the whole. I can sell my daughter.'"

Bella, the 15-year-old rescued by the International Justice Mission, is now staying at Pastor Brewster's shelter, where she said she is finally getting help.

Sex Trade Continues Despite Laws: Group

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
28 October 2009

The sex trade continues to thrive in Cambodia, despite an anti-trafficking law and crackdowns on brothels, an advocate for a leading foundation says.

“The brothels have closed, but the brothel owners won’t be defeated, said Vann Sina, a monitor for the anti-trafficking Mam Somaly Foundation. “It means that they’ve changed into something else, but are still in the sex trade. They’ve changed from brothels to guesthouses, small grocery stores, small karaoke parlors, cafes, massage clubs, restaurants, and sex businesses along the parks. As I said, it’s almost everywhere.”

The foundation was started by Mam Somaly, who herself escaped the sex trade and has become an award-winning advocate protecting young women and girls. Vann Sina gave a talk in Washington last week, in talks sponsored by Free the Slaves, a US non-profit group.

While some brothels have gone underground, Vann Sina said, others remain, with girls as young as five years old serving clients.

Vann Sina, too, was a victim of sex trafficking, brought from Vietnam to Cambodia at age 13, her virginity sold to a Westerner. She suffered druggings and constant abuse when she refused to serve clients until she was rescued by Afesip, another organization run by Mam Somaly, where she became staff.

She urged Cambodia police and other authorities to strengthen their laws and work to end the trade.

“The laws may be ineffective or they may not be implemented well,” said Betsy Bramon, of Free the Slaves, which is based in Washington. “Maybe the system is very corrupt, and that is a very serious problem in Cambodia.”

Law enforcement officials in Cambodia say the Ministry of Interior and local authorities have greatly reduced human trafficking.

Cambodian police have never tolerated any trafficking of women and children, which contradicts the dignity of Cambodian culture, said police spokesman Kirt Chantharith.

“Anyone who knows about the activities related to the women and children trafficking or any other crimes, please report to our police,” he said. “We have two lines for phone calls. You can call free via 117 and 118.”

Sources are confidential, he said.

The child sex trade in Cambodia

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
By Cassandra Clifford
ForeignPolicyBlogs.com

Children around the world are forced into the sex trade, very often by their own families, mislead by promises of economic opportunity or pushed by desperation. The commercial sex industry is fueled by poverty, but driven by demand and while the issue of poverty must be addressed, so must the those who prey on women and children such as through the sex tourism industry.

One of the many countries ravished by sex trafficking is Cambodia. Organizations such , as UNICEF, ECPAT and Save the Children, estimate that there are anywhere from from 50,000 to 100,000 women and girls in the sex trade in Cambodia. Of those in the commercial sex industry in the country many are children, some as young as only a few years old. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) “the majority (52.2%) of female sex trafficking survivors identified were under the age of 17 at the time of trafficking”.

As the global recession continues, children are increasingly vulnerable to sex trafficking. In Phnom Penh, which has about a quarter of the countries sex industry, children who are begging and peddling are increasingly at risk. Many children roam around the city’s Riverside were pedophiles and human traffickers are also known to prey on their innocence.

Little girls who should be giggling and playing with dolls are offering sex in child like terms with happy smiles, “yum-yum, boom-boom”. The normality of it all what is more shocking as children, some as young as four or six, who know nothing other than a life of sex and exploitation. A child who knows more about sex than toys, who think that grown men everywhere desire little girls as their play things…this is the sad reality that is life for many children in Cambodia and across the globe.

In February 2008 the Cambodian government enacted a “Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation”, which was done mostly after years of pressure from the United States. One such form of pressure coming from the US was the country’s low ratings on the State Departments notorious TIP Report, the 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, placed Cambodia on the Tier 2 Watch List. Following the country’s first step to use legal means to impact and deter trafficking, they imposed ban on foreign marriages, in March 2008. The ban was enacted largely in response to a sharp increase in marriages between South Korean men and poor Cambodian women, many who were not destined to newly wedded bliss, but a life forced into sexual slavery. Since the law was enacted Cambodian authorities have conducted numerous raids and cracked down on street prostitution, however the crack down according to many non-profits, has done little to help the actual situation, let alone the victims.

For more eye opening incite into the Cambodian sex trade and those whom it takes as its victims in its unrelenting path, see the video above.

Women and girls are not the only victims of trafficking and slavery in Cambodia, nor is the sex industry the only exploitative industry the country has to a great deal of work to do in order to combat. One such area is labor, such as seen in the recent SIREN case analysis: Cambodian men and boys exploited on long-haul fishing boats, English PDF

A Heroine From the Brothels

Nicholas D. Kristof (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

September 24, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times

World leaders are parading through New York this week for a United Nations General Assembly reviewing their (lack of) progress in fighting global poverty. That’s urgent and necessary, but what they aren’t talking enough about is one of the grimmest of all manifestations of poverty — sex trafficking.

This is widely acknowledged to be the 21st-century version of slavery, but governments accept it partly because it seems to defy solution. Prostitution is said to be the oldest profession. It exists in all countries, and if some teenage girls are imprisoned in brothels until they die of AIDS, that is seen as tragic but inevitable.

The perfect counterpoint to that fatalism is Somaly Mam, one of the bravest and boldest of those foreign visitors pouring into New York City this month. Somaly is a Cambodian who as a young teenager was sold to the brothels herself and now runs an organization that extricates girls from forced prostitution.

Now Somaly has published her inspiring memoir, “The Road of Lost Innocence,” in the United States, and it offers some lessons for tackling the broader problem.

In the past when I’ve seen Somaly and her team in Cambodia, I frankly didn’t figure that she would survive this long. Gangsters who run the brothels have held a gun to her head, and seeing that they could not intimidate Somaly with their threats, they found another way to hurt her: They kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter.

Three years ago, I wrote from Cambodia about a raid Somaly organized on the Chai Hour II brothel where more than 200 girls had been imprisoned. Girls rescued from the brothel were taken to Somaly’s shelter, but the next day gangsters raided the shelter, kidnapped the girls and took them right back to the brothel.

Yet Somaly continued her fight, and, with the help of many others, she has registered real progress. Today, she says, the Chai Hour II brothel is shuttered. In large part, so is the Svay Pak brothel area where 12-year-old girls were openly for sale on my first visit.

“If you want to buy a virgin, it’s not easy now,” notes Somaly, speaking in English — her fifth language.

Somaly’s shelters — where the youngest girl rescued is 4 years old — provide an education and job skills. More important, Somaly applies public and international pressure to push the police to crack down on the worst brothels, and takes brothel owners to court. The idea is to undermine the sex-trafficking business model.

In her book, Somaly recounts how she grew up as an orphan and was “adopted” by a man who sold her to a brothel. Once when Somaly ran away, the police gang-raped her. Then her owner, on recovering his “property,” not only beat and humiliated her but tied her down naked and poured live maggots over her skin and in her mouth.

Yet even after that, Somaly occasionally defied him. Once two new girls, about 14 years old, were brought in to the brothel and left tied up. Somaly untied them and let them run away. For that, she was tortured with electric shocks.

As Cambodia opened up, Somaly began to get foreign clients, whom she vastly preferred because they didn’t beat her as well, and she began learning foreign languages. Eventually, a French aid worker named Pierre Legros married her, and together they started Afesip, a small organization to fight sex trafficking. They have since divorced, and Somaly works primarily through the Somaly Mam Foundation, set up by admiring Americans to finance her battle against trafficking in Cambodia. It’s a successful collaboration between American do-gooders with money and a Cambodian do-gooder with local street smarts.

The world’s worst trafficking is in Asia, but teenage runaways in the United States are also routinely brutalized by their pimps. If a white, middle-class blonde goes missing, the authorities issue an Amber Alert and cable TV goes berserk, but neither federal nor local authorities do nearly enough to go after pimps who savagely abuse troubled girls who don’t fit the “missing blonde” narrative. The system is broken.

A bill to strengthen federal anti-trafficking efforts within the U.S. was overwhelmingly passed by the House of Representatives, led by Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York. But crucial provisions to crack down on pimping are being blocked in the Senate in part by Senators Sam Brownback and Joe Biden, who consider the House provisions unnecessary and problematic. (Barack Obama gets it and says the right things about trafficking to the public, but apparently not to his running mate.)

With U.N. leaders this week focused on overcoming poverty, Somaly is a reminder that we needn’t acquiesce in the enslavement of girls, in this country or abroad. If we defeated slavery in the 19th century, we can beat it in the 21st century.

I invite you to visit my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.

Girls you can sell over and over again

Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Oreganian (Oregon, USA)

On a January day in 2004, 14-year-old Ashley Pond came home and told her parents how much she was enjoying her sophomore year at Rocklin High School, just north of Sacramento. "She never wanted to move from Rocklin," her father recalled. "She wanted to live there forever."

The following night, Ashley and the rest of the family -- her parents, James and Athena, and two younger siblings -- sat down and watched a "Dateline" NBC special, "Children for Sale," on Cambodia's sex traffic in children.

Then they held a team meeting on how to respond to what they'd seen. What the Ponds decided changed everything, not only for Ashley but for at least another 97 teenage girls on the other side of the world.

This is a story about a family and a ministry and an international tragedy . . . and I wouldn't be surprised if a few readers are struggling to focus right about now. That name -- Ashley Pond -- still paralyzes so many of us who were living in the Portland area in 2002, when she and Miranda Gaddis disappeared in Oregon City, the final victims of Ward Weaver.

The two Ashley Ponds were the same age. But while the Ashley who died in Oregon endured years of sexual abuse, much of it at the hands of her biological father, the Ashley who grew up in California is the daughter of parents so determined to stop the prostitution and rape of children in Southeast Asia that they moved their family to Cambodia in 2005.

James Pond had a background in intelligence and special operations with the Marines. His experience with drug interdiction helped him to understand what's driving the country's $30 billion industry in human trafficking and sex slavery.

"The traffickers I've met personally have a moral ambivalence that's clouded by how lucrative it is," Pond said. "Drugs and guns you can only sell once. People you can sell over and over again."

After several months in Cambodia, the Ponds decided the greatest need was a sanctuary in which the victims of the sex trade, virgins at 12 and veterans at 15, could begin the recovery process.

A place where they could receive medical care for their sexually transmitted diseases and dental work on the teeth that had been knocked out by the most zealous of the American sex tourists. A safe house in Phnom Penh where the girls could be tutored in 21st century job skills.

So it was that James and Athena Pond formed Transitions Cambodia, an Oregon-based nonprofit designed to provide freedom and hope for victims of abuse and exploitation. To benefit their work, special screenings of the film "Holly," which stars Ron Livingston, Chris Penn and Thuy Nguyen, will be 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Theater.

James Pond estimates there are 27 million victims of the human slave trade in the world; 97 emotionally and physically battered girls have entered their program. Because many of the girls are 14 or 15, and "still in their prime," Pond said, "we've had traffickers pursue some of them. But there is so much residual product that they've decided why go after those girls when you can just recondition a new one."

And while the Cambodian government has finally grown embarrassed that it's the hub of the world sex trade, Pond said, Chinese and Korean mobsters are moving in, muscling out the local brothel owners and forming VIP clubs for government officials, "which in reality are high-class, high-security commercial sex operations."

Yet he holds on to the same hope he's offering the girls in the face of the brutality that has haunted his family since that January night in 2004. It's a cruel and vicious world, as many Ashley Ponds out there know, and you can only hope to change it one life, one girl, at a time.

Suffer little Children: Legacies of War in Cambodia

March 6, 2008
David McNeill
Japan Focus

Despite a “crackdown” on rampant illegal sex, Cambodia is still a world capital of pedophilia.

At 12, Pov knows the sexual geography of the riverfront area in Phnom Penh like the seasoned prostitute he has become. The four middle-aged Frenchmen in front of us? “They like girls,” he explains, giggling. “Small girls.” The sun-blackened and tattered woman a few yards away? She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger. If I don’t like boys he can fetch girls. Otherwise, in exchange for the meager contents of my wallet, Pov and his three barefoot, scruffy friends will guide me to a safe hotel and stay the night. “What would we do there?” I ask. “Up to you,” he says.

Child-sex broker in Poipet on the Thai border. He approached me in the street and asked me if I wanted "young girls" aged 10+. He brings customers to local brothels on the Cambodian side. "The best customers are Japanese and Koreans. They have money." (All photos David McNeill)

As the sun sinks over the Mekong, Sisowath Quay in Cambodia’s choking capital is a slow-moving river of human traffic. Young couples walk arm-in-arm, tourists gaze at one of Asia’s most beautiful sunsets and children like Pov ply their trade, zeroing in on what they call rich foreign “lady-boys”, or gay men. In the crowd of mainly brown-skinned people, white men stand out like flies on a cake. Some are alone, wearing hats and jackets in the stifling evening heat, strolling or sitting on the river wall, eyeing the crowd. The Frenchmen stand chatting and smoking, exuding the easy calm of long-term residents.

“Girls?” says one of the men in heavily accented English, naked gut bulging over the waist of his khaki pants. “There are too many girls here; as young as you like, as often as you like.” 　A man with a Liverpool accent calls Cambodia a “sweet shop” before becoming suspicious and hurrying away. These are no idle boasts. Give any city taxi driver five minutes and he’ll find a brothel where 12-year-old girls are hawked for US$20-$40. For $500-1,000 and a little more time, they will locate a virgin, boy or girl. Campaigners say children as young as three are still being trafficked and rented out all over this country, mostly to Asian men but also to foreign tourists pouring in through some of the most open borders in the world.

“I know of a brothel with 100 under-aged girls run by high ranking police and military officials,” says one NGO worker who requested anonymity. “There are brothels in some parts of the country where the clients are brought in buses.”

Such stories should belong to the past. After a decade during which Cambodia earned its reputation as a haven for pedophiles, anti-trafficking campaigners have recently begun to bare teeth. Dozens of foreign men have been imprisoned or sent back to courts in Europe and the US, many by the tough deputy head of Phnom Penh’s anti-trafficking bureau Keo Thea. The 2002 deportation to Vietnam of faded glam-rock star Gary Glitter, who was renting a house in the city center, also served notice, said then Minister of Women's Affairs Mu Sochua, that Cambodia was no longer open for business to the world’s child abusers.

Last year, the local courts convicted two of the most notorious pedophiles in the country, Karl Heinz Henning and Thomas Baron von Englehardt, of raping girls aged 10-14. Henning and Englehardt, a ponytailed German who claimed aristocratic descent, paid US$30 per girl to pimps, often parents, before taking the children to a Phnom Penh apartment, drugging them with ecstasy and videotaping hundreds of hours of sex sessions. Some of the children were bound and gagged while the men tortured them in Nazi regalia. The police were called after neighbors heard screaming.

But these successes only scratched the surface. Cambodian Minister of Women's Affairs Mu Sochua quit soon after Glitter was kicked out of the country, saying corruption was making her job impossible. Two years ago, the US threatened sanctions after the State Department said Cambodia had failed to meet "minimum standards" to tackle the trafficking of children.

Today, with tourism increasing by 30 percent a year and many police, judges and politicians on the take, the illegal sex trade is booming. At an age when Western kids think having their first illegal drink is a gas, Cambodian children are being abused by men three or four times their age. US charity World Vision last year said that 15 percent of the Cambodian boys they surveyed had been sexually abused before reaching their tenth birthday. About a third of the roughly 80,000 – 100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia are children, according to Canada-based NGO Future Group. The area around Siem Reap, home to Cambodia’s most popular tourist destination, Angkor Wat, is experiencing an “explosion” of brothels, says Mr. Brewster

The abuse of children is so routine that local newspapers barely cover it. “Its levels of depravity,” explains Irishman Kevin Doyle, editor of the Cambodia Daily. “You think you’ve seen it all and then something new comes along. ‘Ok, Nazi porn S&M and four year-olds; we haven’t had that before,’ you know?”

Arrests are often smothered with cash. Men pay off the families of the victims and the authorities in a country with a barely functioning legal system where the average civil servant earns about US$30 a month. “The families are happy to get the money and drop charges,” says Sourm Dear, Cambodian Director of Rapha House, a center for victims of sexual abuse, who says his organization has to pay the police to chase down missing girls. Traffickers and pimps, protected by military police and even politicians, target poor, broken families, paying $20 to locals for information on potential victims.

Sarom Vath was 15 and living with her grandmother near the border with Thailand when she was approached by a woman with an offer to work as a waitress. Instead, the woman sold her virginity and locked her in a room with the buyer, a middle-aged taxi driver. “It hurt a lot,” recalls Sarom. She was sold to a brothel, drugged and forced to have sex with up to a dozen men a day. “We were given pills and something to smoke, so I couldn’t sleep and didn’t care about anything.” Now 16, and living in a center for abused children, Sarom is angry and rebellious, but says talking about what happened helps “lighten my heart.”

Children like Sarom get a brutal crash course in the economics of flesh. For many -- 38 percent, according to a 2007 report by the International Organization for Migration -- entry into the sex trade comes by selling their virginity, sometimes for as little as $100. Some do so ‘voluntarily’; most are trafficked or tricked. Rady Yen, for example, was 15 and alone on Sisowath Quay when she took up an offer to work cleaning tables, only to find that her virginity had been auctioned off to a Japanese tourist. “I got sick and couldn’t see any more men,” she says.

Rady Yen, tricked in Phnom Penh into selling her virginity and subsequently raped. Now 18 and living in a refugee centre for sexual victims.

She escaped, but the market value of girls who stay in the sex trade plummets: a couple of hundred dollars for a pre-teen, up to $40 for a 12-year-old and on a steadily sliding scale thereafter. Sarom has no idea how much she changed hands for, but thinks it was $5-6 a time.

Rady with her family in Sisophon, a dirt-poor area menaced by sex traffickers.

Crushing poverty fuels the trade. In a festering Phnom Penh slum known simply as “the building”, where naked children play on garbage dumps, watching parents hawk their beautiful 13-year-old daughter to sweating, middle-aged tourists makes twisted sense; she is the only thing of value they have. This slum is home to prostitutes like Kanha Thy, who sold her virginity, aged 14, to a foreign man “aged between 40 and 50” for US$150. At the time her mother was sick and bleeding following a miscarriage and a male neighbor peddled her to the foreigner, persuading her that her mum would die if she didn’t work. The man earned $50 for finding the client. “He tricked me.” She says. Today, Kanha is pregnant with her second child but hides her bump as she works Phnom Penh bars like the “Martini” for foreigners, as does her friend Rous Mach, who has been a prostitute for the last year.

Missing girl poster on lamppost in Poipet.

Foreign intervention, in all its forms, has played a central part in the country's modern tragedy. French control ended in 1954, but in the mid-1960s, the country was sucked into the Vietnam maelstrom. As the US-led war accelerated, Cambodia’s leadership leaned toward China and North Vietnam.

In the early 1970s in an attempt to eliminate North Vietnamese troops en route to the South, the US carpet-bombed much of the country illegally and relentlessly for three years. This destabilizing of the countryside laid the foundation for the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, which ran Cambodia into the ground and may have been responsible for well over a million deaths by the time a Vietnamese intervention overthrew the regime in 1979. Three decades later five top surviving Khmer Rouge leaders are in prison facing trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes, in a special tribunal set up by the Cambodian government and the United Nations. But the country has yet to recover from its traumatic past. "Cambodians have developed a numbness to horror because of their history," says Don Brewster, an American who moved here with his wife in 2004 to set up a shelter for sexually abused children. "There are no barriers; they will do anything for money and they live for today."

Astonishingly, given how freely pedophiles operate there, Sisowath Quay is the most heavily watched area of the country. Undercover cops and NGOs patrol here and the post-2002 crackdown has pushed some of the trade underground. The notorious brothel area of Svay Pak, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, no longer sells children openly on the street to men with British, American and Irish accents, though pimps with mobile phones still hover around the area.

But outside the capital, anything goes. In Poipet, a booming town on the Thai border fuelled mostly by gambling and prostitution, the tuk-tuk motorcycle taxis ferry hundreds of Thai, Chinese, Japanese and other tourists daily to brothels on the Cambodian side, where children of any age can be bought with a handful of dollars or Thai Baht. The street vendors even sell Viagra for about $14 a pack. 　According to Mr. Dear, “In some cases trafficked girls are worth less than the price of a cow,” he says.

Sign on the road leading into Cambodia from Thailand: Absoutely against Child Sex.

He deals with the consequences. At Rapha House, rescued girls are brought back to normality, sent to school and taught to sew, fix hair and grow vegetables. They must come to terms with their experiences and the fact that in this culture they are devalued because they are no longer virgins. “Everybody knows that I’m a victim because I stay at this center,” says Sorum. “People feel sorry for me. That makes me sad.” Some open up and emerge relatively unscarred. Others rebel, fight with other girls, cut themselves or try to leave, often back to poverty, then prostitution. The “recidivism rate” for rescued child prostitutes is 80 percent, according to Pierre Legros, founder of a Phnom Penh NGO that fights trafficking. “The hardest work is not rescuing the girls, it is making a life for them afterwards,” he says.

On the sidewalk of Sisowath Quay, in front of the city’s best restaurants, Pov and his friends tuck into a pizza, bought by a tourist. Like many of the street children here, he is an unsettling mix of naivety and knowingness, his hand resting on my thigh as he pleads for the name of my hotel. He and his friends are desperate because he knows that most of the foreign men come for girls. But later, when photographer Androniki Christodoulou begins to take pictures, the boys drop their sales pitch, curl up like cats on the Quay wall, and smile shyly. They are, after all, just children.

David McNeill writes regularly for a number of publications including the Irish Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a Japan Focus coordinator. Earlier versions of this article appeared in The Irish Times and The South China Morning Post. Posted at Japan Focus on March 6, 2008.

Their goal: Saving kids [in Cambodia]

Don Brewster talks at Adventure Christian Church, where he once was pastor. (Photo: Bryan Patrick / bpatrick@sacbee.com)

Sunday, January 20, 2008
By Jocelyn Wiener - jwiener@sacbee.com
The Sacramento Bee (California, USA)

Lincoln couple gave up all to fight sex trafficking.

The first time Don and Bridget Brewster learned about child sex trafficking in Cambodia – from a "Dateline NBC" television special – they wept openly.

The pastor and his wife had just returned from a brief trip to the Southeast Asian country to help support their church's mission. The heat, open sewage, abject poverty and hopelessness all conspired to make Bridget miserable. They both assumed they'd never return.

But the television program left them horrified. As many as 30,000 children as young as 5 and 6 were being sold as sex slaves to adult men. Many of those men came from the United States.

How could the Brewsters, in good conscience, do nothing?

That was four years ago.

Bridget and Don, a former advertising executive, did some research on the issue, then flew back to Cambodia for a few weeks to meet with advocates and child victims. They learned that the country desperately needed safe places for rescued children to live and recover.

Don, now 53, and Bridget, 55, tried to think of someone who could start up such a shelter in Cambodia's capital city of Phnom Penh. They prayed about it.

Then, while celebrating their 14th anniversary over a fancy Italian dinner, Don looked at Bridget and Bridget looked at Don. And they knew.

So three years ago, the couple sold their 1,500-square-foot home in Lincoln and almost everything in it. They said goodbye to their friends, their congregants at Adventure Christian Church in Roseville, their four adult children and eight grandchildren.

And they moved to Cambodia, to try to make things right.

The couple are now helping run a shelter serving 39 young girls, as well as a community drop-in center for other girls and their families. The children receive intensive cognitive therapy, education, medical care, voluntary spiritual guidance and unconditional love. Many have grown up without consistent access to food and are shocked to receive three meals a day.

In the spring, Don and Bridget will accompany five of the girls from their shelter to Los Angeles to testify against an accused American pedophile named Michael Joseph Pepe. News reports on Pepe's case support the Brewsters' account that Pepe, who is in his 50s, was arrested for raping and torturing at least three young girls.

The monthly budget for Agape International Missions – the 19-year-old Rocklin-based organization through which the Brewsters work – is $60,000. Don and Bridget make periodic trips to the states to help raise money and have been amazed at people's generosity. One couple handed them a check for $75,000 after they spoke at a church.

The other day, Don sat in a cafe at Bayside Church in Granite Bay, meeting with a couple potential volunteers.

Don, with longish gray hair, plastic-rimmed glasses and blue flip-flops, leaned over a polished wood table, showing the women pictures of the girls.

He described cases of children being raped and tortured by one pedophile, then passed on to another. Sometimes the girls' families are complicit, he said. Others get tricked. All are mired in poverty. In some poor villages, he said, every girl can expect to be sold into prostitution by age 10.

Kim Jacobson, Bayside's international volunteer coordinator, said she wishes there was a way to reach out to pedophiles and make them understand the error of their ways.

"Of course, the first reaction is 'Let's kill 'em,' but my heart also breaks a little bit for them," she said. "How could they be so dark inside as to think it's OK?"

Don can't feel sorry for them, he said, though he knows someone should.

"It's too hard when you see what they've done," he said.

Last year, someone offered to sell Don two 5-year-old girls. Another time, a brothel told him they had at least 36 children available for rent – two apiece for himself and 17 friends, if he wanted.

Kaign Christy, the Southeast Asia regional director for International Justice Mission, a faith-based human rights agency based in Washington, D.C., describes the Brewsters' shelter as professionally run and nurturing. He says the couple made a significant difference in the lives of juvenile sex trafficking victims.

"They just deserve to be held up as two people who left their comfortable homes in California and literally sacrificed everything to bring relief to these victims of just unimaginable crimes," he said.

Don and Bridget are more circumspect. As scrutiny increases, they say, more of Cambodia's child prostitution simply goes farther underground.

"Is it better? I would say probably it's better," Don said. "But it's still very bad."

Eventually, the couple hope to create two more centers in rural parts of the country, then leave the shelter and drop-in center entirely in the hands of Cambodians.

Hope, they say, wells up in all sorts of ways. They see it when a little girl realizes that she's not "dirty" or worthless, that she has a future and potential and something to hope for. They see it when a child hugs them or tells them that she finally feels beautiful.

They see it in the transformation they have undergone since that night they switched on the television set and wept. Back then, after all, Cambodia was the last place on earth they'd wanted to go.

Perv took my virginity for £250

Exploited ... 12-year-old Kiet (Photo: Marc Giddings, The Sun)

Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Sun (UK)

THE sickening trade in child sex is flourishing worldwide as paedophiles pursue their evil desires at the expense of the most vulnerable members of society. On Day Two of our special investigation into this sordid sex market, SHARON HENDRY relates from Cambodia the harrowing accounts of two innocent young lives defiled by perverts.

Kiet's story

DRESSED in a “teddy” T-shirt and chattering on her mobile phone, 12-year-old Kiet strolls along the pavement of her local town centre.

But Kiet is not out shopping or on her way to meet friends – she is touting for business as a prostitute.

This is the reality of life for thousands of children in the former war-torn Cambodia, where the average annual wage is less than £175 and life expectancy a mere 59 years.

It has made the country a haven for Western paedophiles who exploit the hungry street children, some as young as five.

Brits are among those who cruise bars such as Dolls’ House, Kit Kat and DV8 – the most notorious being pop star Gary Glitter who was deported from the country in 2002 over child sex offences.

Kiet works the streets of a notorious slum area in the capital Phnom Penh. Along with her 14-year-old sister, she quit her job in a garment factory and made the ten-hour bus journey to the city from her village home.

Kiet’s youthful appearance is a precious commodity for local pimps. Speaking in soft tones, she explains how a Western tourist bought her virginity for £250.

I was very nervous because I had never had sex with anyone before or even kissed a boy properly but my pimp told me there was a man prepared to take my virginity for £250.

It was more money than I could earn in months in my old job stitching clothes in a big factory so I had no choice.

The man was kind to me but afterwards I felt like crying because I had always hoped I would first have sex with someone I loved. It was also very painful.

I was allowed to keep that money but now I have to hand over half my earnings to the owner of my brothel. I am expected to get at least four or five clients a day at £5 a time. Some of the other girls have told me horrible stories about how they are treated by some of the men but I am hoping it won’t happen to me.

Srey Mom's story

Tricked ... Srey Mom (Photo: Marc Giddings, The Sun)

THIRTEEN was horribly unlucky for Srey Mom. That is how old she was when she was forced into the sex industry.

The country girl had become separated from her family and was taken to the country’s capital, allegedly to be reunited with her mother.

But there was to be no reunion – Srey Mom was sold to a brothel.

Now 20, she works for a charity warning girls about the Cambodian child sex industry. This is her story.

The brothel owner told me I had been sold to them and I would have to work as a prostitute.

When I refused, they put me in a dark room with no food and water and gave me electric shocks by tying wire around my body and plugging the live ends into the mains supply.

Eventually, I decided to accept customers. I would have sex with between five and 20 per day.

Most of my customers were from places like Britain and America. Lots of them took Viagra so they wanted sex several times.

Sick

There were about 50 girls in the brothel and we were told to charge £2.50 for quick sex.

I hated having sex with strangers – some of them smelled terrible and I was often in a lot of pain.

After a few months, I became very sick and when I could no longer work, the brothel owner sent me to the hospital.

The blood test showed I was HIV positive.

I begged men to use condoms when sleeping with me but most refused and I couldn’t tell them I had HIV because I needed the money to eat.

One day, a taxi driver offered to take me to a hospital which he said would take care of me. During my recovery I met someone from the charity World Vision. They supported me with hospital fees, clothing and even got me antiretroviral drugs.

Later, they asked me to work for them. Now I give talks to groups of girls warning them not to be tricked into prostitution like I was.

Through Film "Holly," the Pervasive Nature of a Perverse Trade

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original reports from Washington
30 November 2007

"Holly," a feature-length film that screened in Washington Wednesday, tells a gritty story of Cambodia's rampant sex trade through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl and the Western man she tries to convince to marry her, or at least rescue her.

The story, which was filmed across Cambodia's brothel districts, including the notorious Svay Pak, paints a vivid, raw picture of the trade, which continues to thrive in across the country, thanks to corruption and collaboration by police, crime syndicates, traffickers and thugs.

Guy Jacobson, who produced and co-wrote the film, said he was inspired to act by the film after he was approached in 2002 by a clutch of young girls, some as young as five years old, soliciting him for sex. The scenario was appalling and incited him to action, he said. It became a verbatim scene in the film as well.

Holly (Thuy Nguyen), a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl who has been trafficked to Svay Pak, meets a card gambler named Patrick (Ron Livingston), and tries to convince him to marry her. He says she's too young and sets out to learn how he might save her. Along the way, he learns how pervasive the practice is and how hard it is to bring a girl out of it.

The US State Department estimates 800,000 people are trafficked internationally each year, and millions more within national borders are sold into the sex industry. Human trafficking earns millions of dollars per year for corrupt officials and organized crime syndicates.

Jacobson said he received death threats as he tried to make his film, and had to hire 40 men armed with AK-47s to protect him and his crew as they shot.

"When we arrived in Cambodia, we got a call from Interpol saying, 'You guys are crazy. You are in the most dangerous place in the world, making a move about this issue…. Get the hell out of Cambodia,'" he said.

"We were at war trying to make this film," he said.

Interpol's chief officer in Cambodia, Brig. Gen. Keo Van Than, declined to comment on specific threats, saying he was not in his position at the time. "It seems there is not threat," he said.

The two-hour film contains many scenes of drama and suffering, showing police in uniform associating with owners of the brothel and extorting of money, on duty.

Ministry of Interior spokesman Lt. Gen. Khieu Sopheak said the film had "two faces," one to reflect reality and another to harm police credibility.

No country has a perfect police force above corruption, he said. "The Ministry of Interior has always taken legal action for individual police officials who commit illegal acts," he said.

The film also shows foreign tourists who find sexual entertainment under Cambodia's red-lights, where goons who protect brothels "arrest" girls in public without fear and where legal action is non-existent.

Holly and Patrick are stuck in a world with few solutions and few answers. Holly asks Patrick to buy her out of the brothel for $1,000, saying she loves him and wants to marry him. She tries to escape by other means, and, in once scene, literally finds herself in a mine field. Patrick does what he can but finds himself as mired as Holly.

"The movie will be very helpful to people around the world who are ordinary citizens, to make them stop and realize that it is the demand for commercial sexual exploitation which makes it possible for pimps, exploiters, traffickers and corrupt officials to do the harm that they do," said Ambassador Mark Lagon, director of the US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, who opened the screening in front of about 300 audience members.

A Vietnamese student from Georgetown University in the audience who asked not to be named said the film portrayed the "horrible" reality of human trafficking in Southeast Asia but said she was reminded that the trade is everywhere.

Governments need to take the issue more seriously, she said.

Bill Livermore, a representative of LexisNexis, which helped support the film, told VOA Khmer that in the last five or ten years, organized crime was growing "rapidly" and was very profitable, helped along by human trafficking.

The US government meanwhile has put Cambodia on a watch list of governments that are not doing enough to curb trafficking. Cambodia was sanctioned as one of the worst offenders at one time, but it has made some arrests in recent years of sex traffickers.

Lagon welcomed the recent arrest of a Russian businessman in Sihanoukville on charges of debauchery, but he said the US wanted to see better enforcement of trafficking laws.

"That's a step forward," he said, "but we want to see more."