PHOTO/Roxana Olivera
Her fight to end sexual slavery around the globe
Somaly Mam knows the harsh truth of the commercial sexual exploitation of children. For years she lived it from the inside. Mam was just 12 when her grandfather sold her into the sex trade in Cambodia. In the ensuing decade she was traded through brothels across Southeast Asia where she suffered unimaginable horrors. She counts herself fortunate to have escaped death at the hands of entrepreneurial pimps and brothel keepers. But, unable to forget the faces of the girls she left behind, Mam decided to rescue them. Today, she fights child sex trafficking, sexual slavery, illegal confinement and sexual violence at home and abroad.
‘I want you to know what is going on in Cambodia, in Asia and around the world,’ says Mam, speaking in New York City at an anti-trafficking rally organized by The Body Shop and ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). ‘Four-year-old girls are being raped. Five-year-olds are being tortured. They are being robbed of their innocence. These children are being sold, trafficked for sex… And the world somehow puts up with it.’
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