Somaly Mam & Modern-Day Slavery

Somaly Mam was sold as a child into sex­ual slav­ery and forced to work in a brothel along with other chil­dren. She was tor­tured and raped on a daily basis. I couldn’t stop think­ing about her.

I first read about Mam in the New York Times; in colum­nist Nicholas D. Kristof’s account of a raid on a brothel in north­ern Cam­bo­dia. Inside, he and Mam found five girls and one young woman, the youngest girl was about 12 years old.

Not long after read­ing that arti­cle, I stum­bled upon an arti­cle on GQ about the asian sex trade. It starts with the story of a 13-year old girl, who’s try­ing to dance on stage in a small bar off Manila. If one of the cus­tomers buys her for the night, she’d get paid 500 pesos – about 9 US dollars.

Did you know that there are more slaves in the world today than there have ever been in human his­tory – as many as 12 to 27 million?

Did you know that slaves today are cheaper than they’ve ever been in the last 4000 years?

Did you know that slaves are mostly women and chil­dren who are forced into sex industries?

After escap­ing her cap­tors, Mam ded­i­cated her life to fight­ing against sex­ual slav­ery. She estab­lished a non-government orga­ni­za­tion to help vic­tims build a new life, she launched the Somaly Mam Foun­da­tion in 2007 as a fund­ing vehi­cle to sup­port anti-trafficking orga­ni­za­tions and to pro­vide survivors.

Mam has paid a heavy price for her work; she and her fam­ily have faced death threats, her 14-year old daugh­ter was kid­napped and gang-raped. But she still con­tin­ues fight­ing, and has received numer­ous awards for her efforts.

For some rea­son, I couldn’t stop think­ing about Mam. I looked at the faces of the women I love, and I saw their sto­ries jux­ta­posed against Mam. I felt so incred­i­bly grate­ful that the women I know have been able to lead their lives with free­dom and dig­nity, basic human rights denied to so many.

So I made a small dona­tion to the Somaly Mam Foun­da­tion, help­ing in the lit­tle way I could. But thoughts of Mam didn’t go away. That’s when I real­ized I needed to share the sto­ries I’ve heard. So that maybe you can start think­ing about her too.