Activist runs organization to free Cambodian sex slaves

By Virginia Kiddy

Former slave Somaly Mam has made it her life’s work to end sex trafficking.

Opponents to her cause have burned her house, threatened her, kidnapped her children and raped her daughter.

“When I started this, I know I made my life dangerous. It’s not easy for me. A lot of people, they tell me that I’m crazy,” Mam said. “Well, I am crazy.”

About 200 people squeezed into the Cape Florida Ballroom Monday night to hear Mam speak about her experiences and her foundation’s efforts to end sex slavery. When seats filled up, students sat on the floor, stood along the back wall, and perched in from the hallway, watching through the doorways.

Mam is one of TIME magazine’s “World’s Most Influential People” for 2009 and a “CNN Hero.”
She became a slave as a child when a man who called himself her grandfather sold her into prostitution. She lived in a brothel with other Cambodian children and was raped and tortured daily, but after watching the murder of her best friend, she eventually escaped.Since the opening of her shelter in Cambodia, 6,000 girls have been helped out of brothels. The girls call her mother.

“They are lovely,” Mam said.

Mam said it’s difficult to get girls out of the brothel because they are familiar with the routine of their life and don’t know who will love, help or give them a new life. Sometimes families don’t want their children back because of the shame, and they place blame on the children themselves for what happened. The government in Cambodia does nothing to help, Mam said.

In 2008, there was a global focus on establishing anti-trafficking laws in Cambodia, which had none, said Bill Livermore, executive director for the Somaly Mam Foundation.

“There was a major push on, ‘Well, you need to change your laws. That’ll solve everything,’” Livermore said. “Now we’ve come to realize that isn’t true until you can change society.”

Human trafficking is the second-largest organized crime, becoming a bigger business than drug trafficking, according to the Somaly Mam Foundation’s Web site.

Specific and consistent statistics about human trafficking are hard to calculate because of the nature of this worldwide crime. Of the 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, an estimated 1.39 million people are victims of sexual servitude, according to the U.N.’s International Labor Organization.

As many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade, according to the U.S. State Department.

This modern-day enslavement is not limited to foreign lands. It’s in the U.S., too.

“What is happening in our country is happening in your country,” Mam said.

Between 18,000 and 20,000 victims are trafficked into the U.S., according to U.S.

Department of Justice estimates listed on the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking Web site. A large percentage is trafficked into Florida because of seasonal agricultural immigrants.
Junior interdisciplinary women’s studies major Dominique Aulisio, who works with the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking, is starting a student organization called Student Labor Action Project.

“I think that people distance themselves from the problem,” said Aulisio. “I think we all do because a lot of times on the news it’s characterized as being a faraway country. But in reality, the traffickers are very organized, and they’re all over the world.”

Mam encouraged students to raise awareness and become active to end sex trafficking.
She thinks it’s possible within 10 years if everyone “activates” and fights.

“Fighting is not just sitting and talking, but you have to stand up and fight,” Mam said.
She said it is out of her capacity to accomplish the task alone.

“We need all of you,” Mam said.

She encouraged students to go on the foundation’s Web site and read about how to volunteer and learn more about what they do.

Senior Sally Griffin already had Mam’s book, The Road of Lost Innocence, and was excited to hear her speak. She wants to work and advocate against human trafficking. Her major is social work and minor is international studies for that reason, she said.

Griffin just got back from a trip to India with the organization International Justice Mission where she helped with a shelter, met girls who had been rescued from sex trafficking and saw the red-light district firsthand. She was first made aware of sex trafficking when someone from her church spoke about the issue.

“I didn’t know. Once I heard about it, it just kind of lit a fire in me,” Griffin said. “I don’t feel like I can just stand by knowing what I know.”