How to Get Into Mothers Watch Again

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN)

When a poor family in Cambodia brutal afoul of loan sharks, the mother asked her youngest daughter to take a task. Just non but whatever job.

The girl, Kieu, was taken to a hospital and examined by a doctor, who issued her a "certificate of virginity." She was then delivered to a hotel, where a man raped her for two days.

Kieu was 12 years old.

"I did not know what the job was," says Kieu, at present 14 and living in a safehouse. She says she returned home from the feel "very heartbroken." But her ordeal was not over.

After the sale of her virginity, her mother had Kieu taken to a brothel where, she says, "they held me like I was in prison."

She was kept in that location for iii days, raped by three to six men a day. When she returned domicile, her mother sent her away for stints in two other brothels, including one 400 kilometers away on the Thai border. When she learned her mother was planning to sell her once again, this time for a six-month stretch, she realized she needed to flee her domicile.

"Selling my daughter was heartbreaking, but what tin I say?" says Kieu's female parent, Neoung, in an interview with a CNN crew that travelled to Phnom Penh to hear her story.

Like other local mothers CNN spoke to, she blames poverty for her decision to sell her daughter, saying a financial crisis collection her into the clutches of the traffickers who make their livelihoods preying on Cambodian children.

"Information technology was because of the debt, that's why I had to sell her," she says. "I don't know what to do at present, considering nosotros cannot movement back to the past."

It is this aspect of Cambodia's appalling child sex trade that Don Brewster, a 59-yr-old American resident of the neighborhood, finds nearly difficult to countenance.

"I tin can't imagine what information technology feels like to have your mother sell you lot, to have your mother waiting in the car while she gets money for you to be raped," he says. "It's not that she was stolen from her mother -- her mother gave the keys to the people to rape her."

Brewster, a former pastor, moved from California to Cambodia with wife Bridget in 2009, after a harrowing investigative mission trip to the neighborhood where Kieu grew upwards -- Svay Pak, the epicenter of child trafficking in the Southeast Asian nation.

"Svay Pak is known around the earth equally a place where pedophiles come up to get little girls," says Brewster, whose arrangement, Agape International Missions (AIM), has girls every bit young as iv in its care, rescued from traffickers and undergoing rehabilitation in its safehouses.

In contempo decades, he says, this impoverished fishing hamlet – where a daughter's virginity is too ofttimes seen as a valuable asset for the family – has become a notorious child sex hotspot.

"When we came hither three years ago and began to live here, 100% of the kids between 8 and 12 were being trafficked," says Brewster. The local sex activity industry sweeps upwards both children from the neighborhood -- sold, like Kieu, by their parents – as well every bit children trafficked in from the countryside, or beyond the border from Vietnam. "We didn't believe it until we saw vanload afterwards vanload of kids."

Global center for pedophiles

Weak law enforcement, abuse, grinding poverty and the fractured social institutions left by the country's turbulent recent history accept helped earn Cambodia an unwelcome reputation for child trafficking, say experts.

UNICEF estimates that children account for a third of the xl,000-100,000 people in the country's sex industry.

Svay Pak, a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, is at the centre of this exploitative trade.

As one of the about disadvantaged neighborhoods in one of Asia's poorest countries – nearly half the population lives on less than $2 per day -- the poverty in the settlement is overwhelming. The residents are mostly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, many of whom live in ramshackle houseboats on the murky Tonle Sap River, eking out a living farming fish in nets tethered to their homes.

It'southward a precarious existence. The river is fickle, the tarp-covered houseboats fragile. Nearly families here scrape past on less than a dollar a day, leaving no safety internet for when things become wrong – such as when Kieu's begetter fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, as well sick to maintain the nets that contained their livelihood. The family fell behind on repayments of a debt.

In agony, Kieu's mother, Neoung, sold her virginity to a Cambodian man of "maybe more than 50," who had three children of his own, Kieu says. The transaction netted the family simply $500, more than than the $200 they had initially borrowed but a lot less than the thousands of dollars they now owed a loan shark.

So Neoung sent her daughter to a brothel to earn more than.

"They told me when the client is there, I have to wear short shorts and a skimpy top," says Kieu. "Simply I didn't desire to wear them and and so I got blamed." Her clients were Thai and Cambodian men, who, she says, knew she was very young.

Don Brewster, a sometime pastor from California, is the founder and manager of Agape International Missions, an organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating the victims of child trafficking in Cambodia and peachy the networks that exploit them. He moved to Cambodia with his married woman in 2009 after a harrowing investigative mission trip to the neighborhood.

"When they sleep with me, they feel very happy," she says. "But for me, I feel very bad."

The men who corruption the children of Svay Pak fit a number of profiles. They include pedophile sex tourists, who actively seek out sexual practice with prepubescent children, and more opportunistic "situational" offenders, who take advantage of opportunities in brothels to have sexual practice with adolescents.

Sex tourists tend to hail from flush countries, including the West, Southward Korea, Japan and Prc, but inquiry suggests Cambodian men remain the main exploiters of kid prostitutes in their country.

Mark Capaldi is a senior researcher for Ecpat International, an organization committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children.

"In most cases when we talk about child sexual exploitation, it's taking place within the developed sexual activity manufacture," says Capaldi. "We tend to often hear reports in the media about pedophilia, exploitation of very young children. But the bulk of sexual exploitation of children is of adolescents, and that's taking place in commercial sex venues."

The abusers would often exist local, situational offenders, he says. Research suggests some of the Asian perpetrators are "virginity seekers," for whom health-related beliefs around the supposedly restorative or protective qualities of virgins factor into their involvement in child sex.

Whatsoever the profile of the perpetrator, the abuse they inflict on their victims, both girls and boys, is horrific. Trafficked children in Cambodia have been subjected to rape past multiple offenders, filmed performing sexual activity acts and left with concrete injuries -- not to mention psychological trauma -- from their ordeals, according to research.

In recent years, diverse crackdowns in Svay Pak have dented the trade, just as well pushed it hole-and-corner. Today, Brewster says, there are more than than a dozen karaoke bars operating every bit brothels along the road to the neighborhood, where two years ago at that place was none. Fifty-fifty today, he estimates a bulk of girls in Svay Park are being trafficked.

Virgins for auction

Kieu'due south relative, Sephak, who lives nearby, is another survivor. (CNN is naming the victims in this example at the request of the girls themselves, equally they want to speak out confronting the practice of child sex trafficking.)

Sephak was thirteen when she was taken to a infirmary, issued a certificate confirming her virginity, and delivered to a Chinese human being in a Phnom Penh hotel room. She was returned after three nights. Sephak says her female parent was paid $800.

"When I had sex activity with him, I felt empty within. I hurt and I felt very weak," she says. "Information technology was very hard. I thought almost why I was doing this and why my mom did this to me." Subsequently her return, her mother began pressuring her daughter to piece of work in a brothel.

Toha listens to her mother explicate how she came to sell her to sex traffickers. She no longer lives with her family unit, opting instead to alive in a residence for trafficking survivors run past Brewster's system -- but even so provides her family some financial support from her new job.

Non far abroad from Sephak's family home, connected to the shore via a haphazard walkway of planks that dip beneath the water with each footfall, is the houseboat where Toha grew upwards.

The 2d of eight children, none of whom attend schoolhouse, Toha was sold for sex by her mother when she was 14. The transaction followed the same routine: medical certificate, hotel, rape.

Almost ii weeks afterward she returned to Svay Pak, she says, the man who had bought her virginity began calling, requesting to see her again. Her mother urged her to get. The force per unit area drove her to despair.

"I went to the bathroom and cut my arms. I cut my wrists considering I wanted to kill myself," Toha says. A friend broke down the door to the bathroom and came to her assist.

Mothers every bit sex traffickers

CNN met with the mothers of Kieu, Sephak and Toha in Svay Pak to hear their accounts of why they chose to expose their daughters to sexual exploitation.

Kieu's mother, Neoung, had come up to Svay Pak from the south of the country in search of a amend life when Kieu was just a baby. Merely life in Svay Pak, she would learn, wasn't piece of cake.

When her husband's tuberculosis rendered him besides sick to properly maintain the nets on the family's fish pond, the family unit took on a $200 loan at extortionate rates from a loan shark. It has at present ballooned to more than than $9,000. "The debt that my husband and I accept is also big, we can't pay it off," she says. "What can yous do in a situation like this?"

"Virginity selling" was widespread in the customs, and Neoung saw it as a legitimate selection to make some income. "They think it is normal," she says. "I told her, 'Kieu, your dad is ill and can't work… Practice you agree to do that job to contribute to your parents?'"

"I know that I did wrong so I feel regret almost it, but what can I do?" she says. "We cannot motion back to the past."

Simply she adds she would never practise information technology again.

Sephak's mother, Ann, has a similar story. Ann moved to Svay Pak when her begetter came to work as a fish farmer. She and her husband have serious health problems.

"Nosotros are very poor, so I must piece of work hard," she says. "It'south nevertheless non plenty to live past and we're ill all the time."

The family fell on hard times. When a storm roared through the region, their firm was badly damaged, their fish got away, and they could no longer afford to eat. In crunch, the family took out a loan that eventually spiraled to nearly $6000 in debt, she says.

With money-lenders coming to her home and threatening her, Ann made the decision to take up an offer from a adult female who approached her promising big coin for her daughter's virginity.

"I saw other people doing information technology and I didn't think it through," she says. "If I knew and so what I know now, I wouldn't do that to my daughter."

On her houseboat, as squalls of rain lash the river, Toha's female parent Ngao sits barefoot earlier the television taking pride of place in the main living area, and expresses similar regrets. On the wall hangs a row of digitally enhanced portraits of her husband and eight children. They are dressed in smart suits and dresses, superimposed before an array of fantasy backdrops: an expensive motorcycle, a tropical beach, an American-style McMansion.

Life with so many children is difficult, she says, and then she asked her daughter to become with the men.

She would not practice the same again, she says, as she at present has access to amend support; Agape International Missions offers interest-free loan refinancing to get families out of the debt trap, and factory jobs for rescued daughters and their mothers.

The news of Ngao's expose of her daughter has drawn mixed responses from others in the neighborhood, she says. Some mock her for offering upward her girl, others sympathise with her plight. Some see goose egg wrong with she did at all.

"Some people say 'Information technology's OK -- simply bring your girl (to the traffickers) so you can pay off the debt and feel better,'" says Ngao.

A new hereafter

Not long after her suicide attempt, Toha was sent to a brothel in southern Cambodia. She endured more than 20 days there, before she managed to go access to a phone, and called a friend. She told the friend to contact Brewster's group, who bundled for a raid on the establishment.

Although children tin be found in many brothels across Cambodia -- a 2009 survey of 80 Cambodian commercial sex premises plant three-quarters offering children for sex – raids to gratis them are infrequent.

The state's child protection infrastructure is weak, with government institutions riven with abuse. Cambodia's anti-trafficking constabulary does not even permit police to conduct undercover surveillance on suspected traffickers. General Pol Phie They, the head of Cambodia's anti-trafficking taskforce set up in 2007 to address the upshot, says this puts his unit at a disadvantage against traffickers.

"Nosotros are nevertheless limited in prosecuting these violations considering offset, we lack the expertise and second, we lack the technical equipment," he says. "Sometimes, we run into a violation but we tin't collect the show nosotros need to prosecute the offender."

He admits that police corruption in his country, ranked 160 of 175 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, is hampering efforts to tackle the trade in Svay Pak. "Police in that surface area probably do have connections with the brothel owners," he concedes.

Toha'south nightmare is now over. She earns a steady income, weaving bracelets that are sold in American stores, while she studies for her futurity. Her dream is to become a social worker, helping other girls who accept been through the same ordeal.

Brewster believes that corruption was to blame for nearly thwarting Toha's rescue. In Oct 2012, later on Toha's call for assist, AIM formulated plans with another organization to rescue the teen, and involved law.

"Nosotros become a warrant to close the place down," recalls Brewster. "Fifteen minutes later on, Toha calls and says, 'I don't know what happened, the law but came with the owner and took u.s.a. to a new place. I'm locked inside and don't know where I am.'"

Fortunately the rescue team were able to constitute Toha'due south new location, and she and other victims were freed and the brothel managers arrested – although not before the owners fled to Vietnam.

Toha's testimony against the brothel managers, notwithstanding, resulted in their prosecutions.

Last month, at the Phnom Penh Municipal Courthouse, married man and wife Heng Vy and Nguyeng Thi Hong were found guilty of procuring prostitution and sentenced to three years in jail. Both were ordered to pay $1,250 to the court, $5,000 to Toha, and smaller sums to 3 other victims.

Brewster was in court to lookout the sentencing; a small-scale victory in the context of Kingdom of cambodia's child trafficking problem, simply a victory even so.

"Toha'due south an amazingly brave girl," he says on the courthouse steps, shortly later on the brothel managers were led down to the cells.

"Getting a telephone when she's trapped in a brothel to call for help, to maxim she would be a witness in front of the police force…. She stood up and now people are going to pay the toll and girls volition be protected. What it will do is bring more Tohas, more girls who are willing to speak, places shut down, bad guys put away."

Like the other victims, Toha at present lives in an AIM safehouse, attending school and supporting herself by weaving bracelets, which are sold in stores in the W as a way of providing a livelihood to formerly trafficked children.

In the optics of the community, having a job has helped restore to the girls some of the dignity that was stripped from them by having been sold into trafficking, says Brewster.

It has also given them independence from their families -- and with that, the opportunity to build for themselves a meliorate reality than the one that was thrust on them. Now Sephak has plans to become a teacher, Kieu a barber.

For her part, Toha yet has contact with her mother – even providing financial support to the family through her earnings – but has become self-reliant. She wants to exist a social worker, she says, helping girls who take endured the same hell she has.

"(Toha)'s earning a adept living and she has a dream beyond that, you know, to become a counselor and to exist able to help other girls," says Brewster. "You run into the transformation that's happened to her."

For more, visit CNN'southward Freedom Projection blog »

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/12/world/cambodia-child-sex-trade/

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