This book is written by Somaly Mam, a Cambodian humanitarian activist who fights against sexual slavery.
Abandoned as a baby, she was looked after her grandmother until she disappeared. She was then taken into care of a man who claimed to be her 'grandfather', but was treated no better than an unpaid servant. She was raped at 12 (her 'grandfather' sold her virginity to a Chinese man to pay his gambling debts) and was forced to marry at 15. Not long after she was then sold to a brothel in Phnom Penh.
The first half of this book is about her own life, the next half is about her work with AFESIP, an organization she founded to rescue girls who were sold into prostitution.
In Cambodia, because of 30 years under the Khmer Rouge brutal regime, people became egocentric, or only care about themselves. People do not help others simply because they don't trust each other. 3 decades of bombing, genocide and starvation leads to moral bankruptcy. Families who got themselves into debts, will sell their daughters to brothels and the daughters must work in the brothels until the family's debt is paid. But usually the families will get into more debts, so the girls can never leave the brothels. Sometimes the daughters were sold so that their brothers can go to school, or the fathers can gamble, or simply because the family don't have enough to eat. In some cases the family send their daughters to the cities with middle man or agents thinking that they will work in restaurants or as domestic servants.
What these brothels / businesses are like?
They are wooden filthy houses on stilts above water, with rooms separated by sarongs which are run by a 'meebon' (ibu ayam). Toilets are just holes on the floors where all the excrements go straight into the water below. No fresh clean water supply, just buckets of dirty water for the girls to wash themselves. In the same rooms where the girls cook and wash during the day they will be raped and beaten repeatedly (by smelly, drunk, yellow teeth customers) at night. There will also be torture rooms where any girls who are 'difficult' or cause any trouble (eg try to run) will be tied and beaten, and they will be poured with maggots, poisonous insects or snakes. That was during Somaly Mam's younger days (early 1980s) but now they also use electrocutions.
Once she tried to run away, but was caught by the police and put in a cell, where she was raped by the policemen and the next day she was sent back to the brothel.
Who are the clients? Policemen, government officials, soldiers, taxi drivers etc, and even Buddhist monks.
And in Cambodia, there is a believe that if you have sex with virgins you will live longer and it can cure diseases. So the virgins cost more money. And to ensure virginity, brothels usually use small children, age 5-6. Then, to make more money, they will sew back the child's vagina, so they sell them again as virgins. The younger children catch HIV easily, because they tear more. There are AIDS victims due to prostitution as young as 6. What do these kids know? So much evil in this world.
And against all odds Somaly managed to escape prostitution with the help of foreigners and humanitarian workers. She married Pierre, a French man who worked with a French medical aid organization.
She began working in a clinic and she realized that she needs to help other girls. She distributed condoms and gave advices on hygiene and sexually transmitted diseases to the girls in the brothels. Then she began rescuing girls. First she placed them in her house. Then when it gets more crowded she and Pierre started to search for funds to built shelter.
She then set up AFESIP , a french acronym for Acting for Women in Distressing Situations, an organization that combats sexual trade and slavery. See AFESIP
website here.
It is not without hardship. They did not have funding at first. The shelter was initially run on Pierre's salary. A lot of the workers are only volunteers, they don't have salaries. Whenever they alerted the police of a minor being held captive in any brothel, they would follow the raid so that the girl would be released into AFESIP care, instead of into the cells. But sometimes the information would leak (because the police are clients themselves, and sometimes even investors). And if the raid is successful, the pimps would be released in few days, because the judges were bribed. The shelters have high walls and need guards, because they received threats and harassed. Somaly's adoptive family's house was even burnt down.
In one of AFESIP trials in court on behalf of an 8-year-old girl who was raped by a group of men in their 50s, the judge was bribed. The men claimed the girl was provocatively dressed (!!!). And the judge's argument was that the girl is young and has enough time to remake her life, but the men were of venerable age to go to prison. So they walked away free.
Once they raid a large brothel that operates with girls in glass boxes (where the clients, whom a lot are foreigners, can choose the girls on display). This brothel was run by mafias. The next day AFESIP shelter was surrounded by armed men and the girls were taken (even the ones who were not from that large brothel). Even the Ministry of Interior advised Somaly to stay out of it because clearly the mafias are above the government. And Somaly's 14 year-old daughter was kidnapped , but luckily, because she has many contacts in the industry, her daughter was found after 4 days, before she could be smuggled into Thailand.
The AFESIP shelters are now in Pnom Penh, Siem Reap, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and Sisattanak Province (Laos). The shelters are designed to help the girls reintegrate into society by giving them classes on sewing, cooking, hairdressing and keeping accounts, so that they can open their own business. They have psychologist, nurses, social workers, paralegals, and even investigators (to search for other victims). The younger girls were sent to another special shelter in Thloc Chhroy, a village where they can grow up safely and go to the local school with other children. The villagers protect the children.
Everyday girls are trafficked from Cambodia to nearby countries, including Malaysia. The business itself worth $500 million a year, almost as much as the annual budget of Cambodian government. A lot of people have interest to protect this business. Why Somaly is still standing battling this? Only a victim understands a victim. She still lives with the memories of smells of the brothels and the stinking sperm. She washes herself like a madwoman everyday and keep a cupboard full of perfumes. She cannot erase her past. Only rescuing the girls makes her happy.
If this is where the missing children of Malaysia have been sent to, only God can save them. Don't travel alone and protect your daughters. Don't let them walk to school or shops alone. This business is uglier than the Dark Ages' or 'Zaman Jahiliyah'. You can never find them back or you find them broken.
p/s I just found Somaly's Foundation
website if you want to see some photos and news on her work
