What Somaly Mam experienced before her teenage years would cripple even the toughest spirits, which makes the path she has chosen much more improbable and inspiring. As a renowned leader in the battle against the $12 billion per year human sex trafficking industry, Somaly embodies both the horror of this silent epidemic and the triumph victims and activists hope to realize in the future. Raised in a country where women are statistics in the losing battle against sexual slavery, Cambodian-born Somaly has arisen as an invigorating force.
Born into destitution in the Mondulkiri province of Cambodia during the 1970s, Somaly struggled with the rest of her country under the merciless reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. She never knew her parents ─ they disappeared early in her life perhaps due to political strife ─ and her grandmother also abandoned her. Her first memories include working as a servant for numerous families. At the age of twelve, she was sold into prostitution by a man posing as her grandfather.
“I was dead. I had no affection for anyone,” states Somaly as she describes the decade of rape, abuse and torture she endured in a Phnom Penh brothel. Victims of sexual bondage can be as young as five-years old, sold by strangers or even family members for as little as $150. Terrorized to the point of numbness, captives eventually accept their plight in order to survive. Traffickers and pimps often keep prostitutes in cages, only allowing them freedom when customers arrive. In this business, degradation is key to submission, and there is no limit to the amount of force used to break these girls. Once broken, sex workers may see an average of fifteen clients a night for mere pennies for each act.
Somaly’s turning point came in the wake of tragedy when she watched a close friend brutally murdered by a pimp. Looking her in the eye as she died, Somaly understood the desperate conditions and vowed not only to escape but to return and save others. With the help of a French aid worker, Somaly fled Cambodia in 1993.
Three years after her liberation, Somaly created the nonprofit organization Acting for Women in Distressing Situations (or AFESIP, French acronym) that collaborates with local law enforcement to raid brothels and extract victims from hostile environments. Somaly utilizes a holistic approach to rehabilitate girls by providing emotional support and professional training to ensure successful reintegration into society. Lauded for her progress in the anti-trafficking struggle, Somaly launched The Somaly Mam Foundation in 2007 to create a funding source that supports other anti-trafficking groups.
But success has been bittersweet. Having saved nearly 6,000 girls, Somaly constantly faces death threats from traffickers and corrupt government officials. In 2006, brothel owners sought retaliation when they kidnapped and raped her then 14-year-old daughter. However, despite these dangers, Somaly perseveres. “I have a lot of people trying to destroy me everywhere. They are trying, trying, but I just want to say to them, no way.”
Check out more at www.somoly.org
12
Nov
Back to Never Never Land
by Alexis Jones
2 Comments | Posted by thatgirl in Ms Jones' Spoon Full
I’ve packed up all my stuff, put everything in storage, moved out and have no clue where I’m headed. It hit me today, you know how that happens, you think you’re fine and out of nowhere you get hit with the reality, post-shock. Naturally, I have several mature reasons for packing all my stuff up, but not a single one of them was good enough to actually do it. They never are. I think life’s best decisions are made with heart, not upstairs in the sterile black-and-white halls of your brain, where logic rules actions. Personally I think logic is overrated. It’s the cushy couch of your warm, beating heart where the best stuff gets cooked up.
A month ago I said to one of my friends, I’d do anything to just pack up and move somewhere, to go on an adventure and for the first time in my life have no clue where that adventure takes me. The blunt, rather patronizing pop to my mid-day, head in the clouds bubble was, “then do it.” It’s always so funny when someone uses your medicine on you, when it’s the words you speak all the time slipping out of someone else’s mouth and how powerful they are directed at you, not from you. I’m the queen of, “then just do it,” encouraging people in the audience to live life to the fullest, to dare to dream big and to create bold, awesome adventures. It’s crazy when you realize you’re preaching an awful lot of it, and your cozy, comfortable world has gotten a little too cozy and a little too comfortable.
My dream-killer conversation was followed up with the logic police, “ I mean honestly Alexis, I was kidding. Obviously you can’t just pack everything up and chase dreams and adventures. We’re not kids anymore and last time I checked, we don’t live in Never, Never Land.” That’s when it hit me, this whole “growing up thing” is totally overrated. Maybe I’m the Wendy who never went home, but I don’t subscribe to the rules everyone else plays by. I don’t think I ever have.
Regardless the gauntlet had been set and I can’t possibly think of a better reason why I can’t in fact up and leave to do whatever I want. I have a job I can do from anywhere. I am single, with no ex-husband or children, mortgage. I’m not in serious debt, running from the police or on house arrest. I have no pets, no life-threatening disease, no responsibility to anyone other than myself and while this will not always be the case, it certainly is right now. I cannot think of a single good reason why I should not do something mildly crazy, ridiculously exciting. Just because every bit of it scares me is not a good enough reason not to do it.
I think fear is crippling to so many, the ultimate dream spider that stalks a hope, suffocates passion, induces paralysis and eventual death to dreams caught in its web. I’m twenty-six and I’m right at that age where I see friends of mine, who were the dare devils in high school, the Passionistas in college and the adventure hungry in grad school, fall one by one. I’m watching the glazed eyes, the resignation in their voices and haunting pictures posted on Facebook as they slave away for a company they hate.
You see, the reason we love Peter Pan so much is there is something thrilling about a world in which we still get to play. Where we get to fly, swim with mermaids and fight with pirates. I’m not so Pollyanna that I can’t see there are real life responsibilities, that the world isn’t perfect and work is necessary. I get all of that, I just don’t believe that growing up means we give up on life as an adventure. I believe we can still have fun, be spontaneous and do things that absolutely don’t make sense. I think that while we are still “young,” which I hope to be forever, we are still as eager to discover new life experiences, to revel in ambiguity, to sign up for things that scare us all while inspiring others to live a little more and worry a little less.
I’ve always been a girl who leads by example — soapbox was never my style. Now I don’t have all the answers, I’d be lucky if I had a few. But what I do know is there’s a world of people out there, myriad of cultures I’m dying to see and feel, with life experiences begging me to show up for them. I have my whole life for routine, to be a fantastic wife, an amazing mother. But not now, when this moment is all I have.
So my advice for you today, whoever happens to stumble upon this blog, is to do it. I don’t know what that is for you, or where you are in life. I don’t know what you have on your plate, but don’t let anything, anyone hold you back any longer. Clean up the mess, cut some strings, walk away, quit, do what you have to do to stay true to yourself. If you’re not happy then change something. If you need some adventure, create it.
You have this one, precious life and you alone dictate how colorful your mural is at the end of your journey. You decide the depth, texture, size, the spectacular spectrum of shades and brush strokes. I would never pretend to fathom what life has in store for me. I’d underestimate God if I thought I knew the rollercoaster ride in store for me. But what I do know is that life is not too short, but rather, far too long for me to waste another day not seeking out and stalking every adventure calling my name.
I will be that girl who looks back at the end of a long, fulfilling lifetime and say I left it all on the field. I won some, lost more, but got back each time and begged for another opportunity to be surprised by the altruism in humanity, my own courage, for the uprising of a generation of people who care about things bigger than themselves, by the bravery of those living without and my passion to capture their humbling and heroic stories.
There are a lot of unspoken rules in life, society’s invisible regulations of normalcy, and the unseen but surely felt pressures to fit in. To hell with all of them. No person made history fitting in, staying quite and floating under the radar. I’m on the adventure of my life, have no idea where I am going, what I am doing or any other details to the story. I’ll keep you posted on where the wind blows me, but in the mean time, stop reading about mine and set out on your own expedition. Keep me posted where YOU end up and who knows… maybe we find out paths crossing on our adventure back to Never, Never Land.
(Pictures courtesy of Care.org and tantrumzz.com)