Fighting For Innocence (word document, 102 KB)
Human trafficking is so common now that it is the third most profitable criminal activity in the world after illegal drugs and arms trafficking. Unlike drugs or arms, women and children can be "sold" several times, meaning easy profits for traffickers. The UN estimates that about one million trafficked children in Asia alone are victims of the sex trade.
Somaly Mam is an extraordinary woman and survivor who turned her own experience of abuse into founding an organization that has to date rescued more than 3,000 women and children from sexual slavery. She was abandoned and raped when she was 12, sold to an abusing husband who continued raping her before selling her to a brothel when she was 15. Here she had to accept up to 10 clients a day. She escaped in time and married again, had 3 children and founded the organization AFESIP in her native Cambodia.
The work of AFESIP begins in the brothels, karaoke bars, rooms of massages where sex is sold and where the team is able to gain access. Once in the vicinity, they investigate cases of trafficking, slavery or prostitution of minors and educate prostitutes about HIV and STDs. Information is taken to the police who can then rescue the women and children.
Once rescued, the girls are taken to one of six AFESIP centers where medical and psychological attention is given. The center is a safe haven where they find protection from pimps, clients and traffickers. Many girls suffer from sexually transmitted diseases or HIV and need counseling to recover from the trauma of sexual violence and forced drug abuse. Victims of less than 16 years old go to local school until they are old enough to start work at one of the partner factories if they so wish. All center residents take part in a program of alphabetization and basic calculation. Older girls go to professional classes to study hairdressing, dressmaking, cooking or agriculture, all accompanied by playful activities so that they improve their self-esteem and they develop personal abilities destroyed by their experience of slavery.
If victims wish to return with their family and community, AFESIP workers visit the families and evaluate the possibilities of reintegration of the trafficked girl or woman. Older girls return to their community with a package of tools, raw materials and a micro credit to start their own business.
In Cambodia corruption level are high and contaminate all layers of authority - most victims of sexual slavery do not have access to justice. The legal department of AFESIP does manage to stand up for them by finding witnesses, managing the necessary paperwork and representing the victim in the judicial process so that traffickers and pedophiles - many of them western - can be brought to justice.
