Han was 13 when her stepmother sold her for $50 to a recruiter for a Phnom Penh brothel.
Neang, 13, was working as a housemaid in Battambang province when her family let her go to Phnom Penh with a woman promising a better-paying maid job. Neang was taken to a brothel, beaten and kept prisoner.
Roth was looking for domestic work in Phnom Penh when a moto-taxi driver said he knew a house where a rich family lived. There, Roth was bundled into a room and the door locked. She too was beaten and imprisoned, forced to service up to 15 men daily.
These stories are typical of those told by many of Cambodia’s estimated 100,000 sex workers. Organizations that work with prostitutes say as many as a third were forced into the trade, either kidnapped or tricked, then kept under lock and key. Many more are indirectly coerced by poverty and lack of opportunity to earn a living any other way.
The average age of sex workers is dropping, child welfare workers report, as customers seek to avoid AIDS by choosing younger girls. In 1997, raids on brothels found 11-year-olds working as prostitutes. Up to one-fourth of the nation’s sex workers are younger than 18.
Recruiters comb the countryside for suitable girls. In Phnom Penh’s thriving sex trade, a virgin is sold for anywhere between $300 and $600 for a week. After a few weeks, her price falls to as little as $1 for 20 minutes. But even at those prices, the trade is conservatively calculated to total $2.4 million a year.
Han’s stepmother got $50 for the girl; the woman who resold her in Phnom Penh would have made a tidy profit. Han doesn’t know how much her first customer paid. All she remembers is waking up from a drugged stupor in a bed with him.
“The first time I had sex, I was very scared. It hurt so much,” says Han, a round-faced girl with soft eyes and an even softer voice. “Later, I refused to sleep with the customers for 10 days, but the brothel owner beat me every day with an electric wire until finally I gave in again.”
Roth was 32 and struggling to support her 2-year-old daughter when she was sold. She spent a month as a sex slave—locked up, beaten and forced to sleep with up to 15 customers a day—before escaping and being reunited with her daughter.
But her relief was short-lived. Soon after her rescue, Roth tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. She knows now she probably won’t live to see her daughter grow up.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this life,” she said recently, holding the little girl in her lap. “I just want to be sure nothing like this ever happens to my daughter.”
In fact, Han and Roth are lucky in one way. They escaped the brothels. Now they live in shelters for abused women and children.
Trafficking of women and children is big business in Cambodia. All statistics are estimates, but they outline the magnitude of the sex industry. In 1996, Unicef estimated 80,000 to 100,000 sex-trade workers. In 1997, the agency reported 20,000 sex workers under 18—this nation’s legal definition of a child.
Although being a prostitute aged 18 or more is not a crime in Cambodia, making money from prostitutes is. Brothel owners, procurers and accomplices are all liable under the law, and penalties range up to 20 years. Further, operators of places of “debauchery or obscene acts” can be sentenced to five years, and customers—if the sex-trade worker is a minor—can be sentenced to up to 20 years.
But the law, passed in 1996 with the express purpose of suppressing kidnapping and human trafficking, faces a formidable organization. Aid workers describe an intricate network of recruiters, transporters, protectors and pimps radiating from Phnom Penh to the farthest provinces.
“The situation is bad. The trafficking has increased. The kidnapping and trafficking of children is getting worse,” says Yim Po, director of the Cambodian Committee for the Protection of Children’s Rights. His NGO has helped rescue nearly 100 children from brothels since 1995.
Authorities Involved
When trying to fathom how a society can tolerate buying and selling its most vulnerable members, it is easy to point to economic and social factors that deny girls the education and job opportunities that could help them avoid prostitution.
But there is another, uglier reason for the flourishing sex trade. Talk to virtually anyone involved in helping exploited women and children, and you’ll hear the same refrain: The authorities can’t stop the trade because they are involved. Too many people are making too much money for it to stop. And people who work to help those trapped in the sex trade all say they have too much to lose to go on the record with precise accusations.
“Many civil servants are involved in trafficking….Some police—not all, but some—are involved with the traffickers. When we try to rescue girls, this makes it difficult,” says Men Sedtharoat of the French NGO Afesip—Agir Pour les Femmes en Situation Precaire.
Police are often protectors and enforcers for the brothels. And there is increasing evidence that they are involved in buying and selling kidnapped girls, or at least willing to turn a blind eye, advocates for women say.
“In the sex trade there are some rich men, important men, who cooperate with the traffickers,” Yim Po says.
The involvement of officials is blamed for the failure of even highly publicized crackdowns on prostitution to seriously curb the industry. Even those brothel owners and traffickers who are arrested often are able to call on powerful friends for help, or to simply buy their way out of trouble, activists say.
Chanthol Oung, executive director of the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center, gives an example of the open and implied threats leveled at those who try to interfere with Phnom Penh’s sex trade.
One expensive brothel, which masquerades as a massage parlor, was raided recently and 23 prostitutes were rescued and taken to her shelter. The Vietnamese female owner of the brothel was also arrested—but not the Cambodian military official who is co-owner with the mama-san.
“He is a colonel,” said Chanthol Oung, “and unofficially he is also an owner of the brothel. But he was never arrested.”
Shortly after the 23 prostitutes were admitted to the shelter, a man came to the door, asking for one of the girls. He was wearing a military uniform and armed with a gun and grenades, but his approach was polite. He told workers he was the nephew of the brothel owner and he had fallen in love with one particular woman and wanted to take her home.
The woman refused to go and the soldier became forceful. At length, shelter workers asked him to come back another day—and when he did, the police were waiting for him. He did not return again, and the former sex worker plus the other 22 women accepted the shelter’s help to return to Vietnam.
Chanthol Oung doubts the nephew’s tale of romance and thinks he was trying to retrieve one of the brothel’s more valuable assets. “She was the prettiest of the girls,” she says.
And government and military officials are involved as customers—Roth, for example, says more than half the men she serviced were police, soldiers or government officials.
Advocates for children speak—strictly off the record—of a villa near Phnom Penh’s Independence Monument that specializes in in housing virgins from the provinces to sell to Phnom Penh’s rich and powerful.
“The police know about this house but they do not do anything about it,” said a child advocate. “If the [low-level] police try to investigate it at all, they will lose their jobs and will be in danger.”
The house came to child advocates’ attention when one rescued sex worker told her counselor about it. She also said the man who bought her virginity there was a well-known, ministerial-level official in the government.
Other rescued sex workers have reported servicing high-ranking officials in the police and military, but advocates say they are virtually powerless to do anything. They say they are too afraid to mount an undercover investigation against such powerful people.
Kann Chheun, prosecutor for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, also said he has heard reports of high-ranking officials involved in the sex trade.
“Actually, I [am] truly afraid to tell you the truth about this,” he says. “I am only a civilian, and they are high-ranking military officials.”
First Prime Minister Ung Huot, asked about reports of official involvement, said the government will not hesitate to take action if there is proof of wrongdoing by any official. “The royal government does not condone this thing,” he said in a March 3 interview.
When told that many authorities are afraid to even begin an investigation, Ung Huot said they should have courage. “Tell me the name of the authorities and I will tell them they have nothing to fear. They should investigate.”
Familiar Story
Widespread corruption throughout Cambodia’s law-enforcement agencies is a key to the unfettered operations of the sex trade.
For example, on Jan 24, investigators from the NGO Afesip and Phnom Penh municipal police raided a brothel in the northern Phnom Penh area of Bang Sa Yam. The police and rights investigators arrested 25 people, 22 of them prostitutes and the remaining three, brothel managers. Because it was a Saturday, the investigators filled out a report and left and they are high-ranking military officials.”
First Prime Minister Ung Huot, when asked about reports of official involvement, said the government will not hesitate to take action if there is proof of wrongdoing by any official. “The royal government does not condone this thing,” he said in a March 3 interview.
When told that many authorities are afraid to even begin an investigation, Ung Huot said they should have courage. “Tell me the name of the authorities and I will tell them they have nothing to fear. They should investigate.”
Familiar Story
Widespread corruption throughout Cambodia’s law-enforcement agencies is a key to the unfettered operations of the sex trade.
For example, on Jan 24, investigators from the NGO Afesip and Phnom Penh municipal police raided a brothel in the northern Phnom Penh area of Bang Sa Yam. The police and rights investigators arrested 25 people, 22 of them prostitutes and the remaining three, brothel managers. Because it was a Saturday, the investigators filled out a report and left the 25 at the station to appear in court Monday, Afesip investigator Sao Chhoeurth said.
But when investigators arrived at court Monday, there were only 17 people there from the brothel. The three brothel managers, along with five of the prettiest—and most valuable—young women, were gone.
“The original report we had made together, Afesip and police, this was gone,” Sao Chhoeurth says. “There was a new report that only mentioned the 17 girls.”
When he talked to the remaining young women—who were not charged and were released to aid agencies—they said the brothel owners had paid $3,000 for their freedom.
“I made a complaint, but what could be done?” Sao Chhoeurth says. “We have nothing to prove and no specific person to accuse.”
It’s a story that human rights advocates hear time and time again.
Kann Chheun said the widespread police corruption frustrates the many officials who are sincere in trying to stop sexual slavery.
“You must realize that the wage of a civil servant is very low,” he explains across a table in his sparsely furnished office.
“If these people keep brothels existing, then they make some money out of that. In contrast, if they eliminate, it means that they destroy themselves,” he says. “I don’t mean to imply all government officials are bad. There are many good people. But all officials are not good, either.”
Grim pattern
Talk to enough women and children in the sex industry and a grim pattern emerges.
The process almost always starts with a recruiter, usually a woman, who offers a way to earn money to desperately poor families with daughters. While some families do knowingly sell their children, many believe they are sending their daughters to be maids to earn an income that could help the family, according to a recent report by the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center.
That is what happened to Neang, the rice farmer’s daughter in Battambang province, who told her story to crisis center staff.
Neang was earning about $12 a month as a maid in her home village when a woman offered her a better-paying job. The family was desperately poor and agreed to allow Neang to go with the woman to Phnom Penh.
Taking a girl away from her community is common in sex trafficking because it makes it harder for her family to find her and puts her under greater control of the brothel managers, the crisis center’s Chanthol Oung says.
Once in Phnom Penh, Neang was sold to a brothel. She was told she must work off the money the brothel owner paid for her. She protested and initially refused to sleep with customers, but was beaten until she agreed. She spent her days locked in a room, serving up to 20 men a day from 10 am to 6 am.
Neang said she tried several times to kill herself. Once, she tried to hang herself, but the beam she tied the noose to broke. Another time, she overdosed on drugs, but was revived.
Of the 10 rescued sex slaves the crisis center helped last year, nine told of suicide attempts. The remaining woman had developed a different strategy: She said she had been plotting to kill the brothel owner.
Neang was finally rescued by a foreign customer who took pity on her and bought her from the brothel. He took her to a child protection agency and she was able to contact her parents.
But her suffering was far from over. After a blood test, Neang tested positive for HIV. She soon developed AIDS, at age 14. Still, she insisted on returning to her family’s farm, saying she wanted to spend her last days helping her parents.
Scarred for Life
A 1996 report showed 40 percent of Cambodia’s sex workers were infected with HIV. Human rights workers estimate that today’s figure is closer to half. By contrast, neighboring Thailand’s sex workers have an HIV rate of 16 percent among sex workers.
But even for women who survive their ordeal without becoming infected, the future still looks bleak.
“Basically, when you force someone into prostitution, you are scarring them for life,” says Herve Berger, the Bangkok-based international director of End Child Prostitution, Abuse and Trafficking.
Former sex slaves in Cambodia not only have their own trauma to deal with, but must face social stigma, says Chanthol Oung The fact that society prizes virtuous, virginal women means that former sex workers face contempt when they return to their communities, she said, noting that the Khmer word for prostitute, srey khouch, means “bad woman.”
“Sex workers, whether abducted, tricked, forced or coerced into the sex trade, are reviled by society and often feel too ashamed to return home,” she says. “Even after their bondage is over or their debt is paid, they often remain trapped in the sex trade.”
Those who do leave the business often suffer nightmares and depression. For these reasons, shelters that help victims of trafficking incorporate not only counseling, but also vocational training to help former sex workers rebuild their self-esteem.
Cambodian Women’s Development Association Director Serey Phol said the prevalence of prostitution contradicts the high value Cambodian society places on womanly virtue.
“Each Cambodian girl loves her honor and feels very much ashamed about the state of prostitution,” Serey Phol said.
“We should be sympathetic toward the prostitute who has left the sex trade and we should not blame her. She should be able to live in society without discrimination, so she does not get forced back into prostitution.”
Chea Vannath of the Center for Social Development said the burden of poverty forces too many women into the trade.
“The girl who becomes a sex worker usually earns money to feed her family, not to spend on debauchery,” she said. “Women who are forced into the sex trade by poverty are victims and this is a question for the country to consider.”
Chea Vannath said the lack of emphasis society puts on educating girls is in part to blame, but also the behavior of men.
