Somaly Mam Foundation Terminates Funding to Afesip

Anti-trafficking NGO Afesip has announced that funding from the Somaly Mam Foundation, which is the organization’s primary donor, was completely terminated without warning earlier this month.

“On June 12, 2014 afternoon, we had received a shocking news during a meeting with Gina Reiss, the Executive Director of SMF, at Green Palace hotel as she informed that ‘SMF could not provide fund on general operating support to AFESIP per our agreement 2014 SMF 001 anymore’. The informed decision was said to be effective immediately,” wrote Afesip executive director and CEO Chhoeurth Sao in a statement on Wednesday.

The organization has entered a “crisis” and is unable to take in any more women or girls under its care, Mr. Sao wrote.

Afesip was founded by Somaly Mam, who stepped down from her eponymous foundation last month after Newsweek magazine published an expose revealing that her back story as a sex slave had been fabricated, along with those of some girls in her care.

The Somaly Mam Foundation—which has since announced that it will be renamed and rebranded—also carried out an independent, internal investigation into Ms. Mam’s history and that of one of the foundation’s supposed survivors of sex slavery, Long Pros.

The results of the investigation have not been made public.

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