Former sex slave seeks help as 4-year-old found in brothel

[Coventina]

Source: Reuters

A former sex slave on Monday launched a global campaign against trafficking, saying the age of girls forced into prostitution keeps getting younger.

Cambodian Somaly Mam, whose eponymous foundation is dedicated to fighting the $12 billion a year sex-trafficking industry, said a four-year-old girl was found last month at a brothel in Cambodia after being reported by a male client.

The youngster had been sold to the brothel by her mother, who is also a prostitute.

She is now being cared for at one of the seven shelters run by the Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam set up to protect and rehabilitate girls rescued from sex slavery. The group also has an office in Thailand dealing with repatriation.

"You just have to hold her and stay with her and show her that you love her. Children can become children again," Mam told Reuters as she launched a joint venture with cosmetics retailer The Body Shop to raise awareness of sex trafficking.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5720FH20090803

[snagglepuss]

1. Words fail. Thank you for posting this.

[shireen]

2. i'd like to find the perverts

who think that sex with kids is ok, and accidently drop a big sharp knife on a strategic location.

I swear ... it was an accident.

:mad:

[valerief]

5. I want to drop pianos on all of them. Heavy pianos. nt

[1monster]

11. Why use an instrument of beauty on them? A concrete block would be cheaper and more effective.

[ladywnch]

14. anvil..... like in the Warner Bros cartoons........large heavy anvils!!!!

[TrogL]

49. Just use Yamaha's - can't stand them

Might improve the tone.

[Blue_Tires]

16. not just that, but also the parents who willingly SELL their own daughters into sex slavery

:argh:

[nolabear]

3. We have to keep bringing these horrors to light

Thank you.

[Flying Dream Blues]

12. You're so right, and a belated welcome to DU. nt

[Beacool]

4. Who they should go after is all the SOBs who pay to have sex with underage boys and girls.

I never watch MSNBC, but this weekend I watched their show on sex slaves in America. It doesn't just happen overseas. Young people are being lured, kidnapped and drugged to pleasure some sick bastards. They had the story of a 16 year old girl who was drugged and kidnapped, the bait had been another girl in her school. The "father" (turned out to be her pimp, not father) took her to some house and several men repeatedly raped and beat her up. When she finally was found, she was bleeding severely from her vaginal lacerations, had bite marks on her breasts and ended up getting gonorrhea in her mouth and chlamydia. Those sons of bitches deserved to be thrown in jail and raped daily!!!

Forgot to add, these people were never caught. They got the pimp and girl, but not the rapists.

These things are occurring on a daily basis right here in our homeland and few people are doing anything about it. Many so called runaways have actually ben taken for the sex slave trade.

:grr:

[glitch]

36. Hear hear. nt

[dipsydoodle]

6. That's awful

x(

[FirstLight]

7. Can't speak, my stomach is churning...

What many also don;t realize is that these girls are also used to turn a profit overseas, as in HERE in the US, by use of the good old internet...

My EXhusband had a problem with teen and young girls and porn...I didn't realize how sick he really was until right after I left him, hacked my own computer and found a movie file of a 6-7 year old girl being raped.

I called the police - because I knew as much as it could destroy his "life", what was happening was so wrong on all levels to the girls on those sites...
Unfortunately after a lengthly investigation covering 2 states, they determined that most of the sites were "offshore" and therefore they couldn't track them down or wouldn't bother...
(he was sentenced to a year of counseling - which he didn't do, and 3 years probation, no sex offender status (even after they had my 2 year old daughter examinied by the state to determine sexual abuse - "inconclusive"), and he had 'time served') Thank goodness he violated parole and got busted on another unrelated charge - he's gone for a few years now...
~~~~

:cry: can't believe that we can't help END this sickness in society... so many lives broken, and girls who will never know hat it feels like to have their bodies be their OWN

[texastoast]

8. Oh bless your heart

What horror. Sick bastards. It was a pervert breaking in my house that made me go buy my first shotgun and .38 (with hollow points just for him, if he ever came back). I HATE those people. That fucker had no right to rob me of my peaceful tendencies. And anyone who wants to reply and take up for them because they were so mistreated when they were children needn't bother unless you too have had someone's hands around your neck telling you they were going to kill you while your baby slept across the hall.

Obviously, however, he was wrong.

[pink-o]

17. Everyone has a breaking point. Sick baby-rapers are mine as well.

I don't even have children, but if I saw a sicko abusing a helpless child and there was a gun closeby, that fucker would be dead before I could even think about it. And if there wasn't a gun, I'd kill him with my bare hands.

Anyone who's ever seen a 35-year-old man break down in abject tears on the witness stand while testifying about a priest or an authority figure raping him and destroying his life--well, those are the people we should have compassion for. The Pedophiles can never be cured, so let's just lock 'em up in the general population and turn a blind eye to the fact that other prisoners are doing to them what they did to young, vulnerable children.

That's a pretty good Karmic consequence, as far as I'm concerned!

[Hello_Kitty]

25. Yeah, fuck the apologists

Lots of people were mistreated as children who did NOT turn around and harm children when they grew up. That is not an excuse.

[kiva]

9. I'm speechless.

But furious. :mad: Children aren't sexual objects.

[gaspee]

10. Aha

The pay for rape brigade will be here soon, insisting these girls "choose" to be prostituted because they can make more money than they can getting a "real" job.

Sick - what I would love to do to one of these bastards that thinks it's all right to pay to have sex with a child.

[Flying Dream Blues]

13. Gads, I sure hope you're wrong...they really defend this? nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

18. what nonsense. people who support prostitition dont support child prostitution

what a thoroughly dishonest argument

[Hello_Kitty]

27. Right, because most adult prostitutes don't start out as underage prostitutes

Except that, oh wait, yeah they do.

[Liquorice]

28. You make an excellent point. nt

[gaspee]

33. That's exactly my point

Thank you for seeing the bigger picture.

I support decriminalizing prostitution, but not the buying of sex.

Where do people think prostitutes usually come from? From the ranks of prostituted children. The statistics are clear and undeniable.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

41. hardly. nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

40. yes, and again most people who support sex workers want them to be protected

and keeping the industry underground doesnt help

[Hello_Kitty]

42. No matter how much you protect sex workers there will always be a market for children.

As long as men are brought up to believe that they are entitled to use other people as receptacles for their sexual urges, some of those men will feel they are entitled to use children.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

44. because keepig prostitution illegal has been succesful at dampening this sense of entitlement?

[Hello_Kitty]

50. The OP is about child prostitution, not the need to legalize prostitution.

gaspee posted that someone would be along to defend and minimize the sex trade, and sure enough someone did.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

54. really, who did? i specifically told her not to confuse the issues.

if you cant win an argument, resorting to dishonesty, is just crass

[Hello_Kitty]

55. I suppose you think you are winning.

What you are really doing is carrying water for the pimps and the johns.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

56. another example of a dishonest argument. nt

[One_Life_To_Give]

43. Putting adult prostitutes behind bars won't solve the problem

And we are not likely to see an end to the oldest profession anytime in the near future. However we may have a fighting chance to put an end to the abuse of some of the youngest. If we can manage to focus on more than one thing at a time.

1) Vigorous prosecution of those involved with underage victims in the sex trades.
2) Providing alternative support for the young people who would otherwise find themselves forced into it. (e.g. Cast-out gay child)

[Odin2005]

51. Wouldn't that be simply BECAUSE prostitution is illegal in most places?

Prostitution is like the use of mind-altering substances, it is simply futile to eradicate it. Does that make either drug addiction or the exploitation of women a good thing, of course not, but driving either underground via banning it helps nothing. And it is none of my business what someone does with his/her own body even if I don't approve of it.

[Hello_Kitty]

53. I don't agree that prostitution and using mind altering substances are the same thing

A prostitute is a human being. A substance is not a human being.

And I really don't think that making more legal prostitution available will dampen the demand for children and teens. Some of the worst child sex trafficking happens in places where prostitution is either legal or at least tolerated. Furthermore, there's nothing underground about the selling of children's bodies in those places.

[YOY]

20. As a father I turn into Samuel L in "A Time To Kill" in my imagination.

Slowly and painfully...unlike Samuel L in that movie...

[Hello_Kitty]

29. Of course they will.

It's hilarious the lengths they will go to justify their "harmless and victimless" little hobbies. And they love to claim that being a cum receptacle for random men is NO DIFFERENT from working at any other shitty job. Though I don't see any of them volunteering to be a prostitute.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

30. Among other libertarian fantasies...

Usually there would be a dozen posts by now about how if prostitution were legal none of this wouldn't happen, when indeed it is legal prostitution, especially in western europe that feeds the demand for the trafficked women.

[Hippo_Tron]

32. Well I don't support punishing women for being prostitutes

I can see some wisdom in punishing people who hire prostitutes, however.

[noiretextatique]

35. i hope i don't run into them

no way can a 4 yo child "choose" to have sex with an adult :grr: :argh: :nuke:

[MADem]

38. What? I've seen some goofy shit on this forum, but NEVER anything like that. Ever. NT

[La Lioness Priyanka]

45. because there has never been any support for legalizing child prostition on du, ever,

except in this person's imagination.

[MADem]

46. Or even TOLERATING it. Not that I've seen. If I'm mistaken, I'd certainly like one of those

little old "prove it!" links.

I don't think the admins would put up with that kind of disgusting shit, either. The mere suggestion offends.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

47. there has been support for decriminalizing adult prostitution.

but to pretend that peopel here support child prostitution is completely dishonest and deliberately confusing two seperate issues

[MADem]

48. That's a horse of a different color entirely. There are places in USA where that is legal.

I don't know of anywhere in the world where there are laws legalizing abuse of children in that fashion.

There are places with poor enforcement, but nowhere where that kind of dispicable condut is "legal."

Using false equivalency to prosecute an argument is just...not cool, and that's what the poster is apparently doing, absent production of a link.

[No Elephants]

57. A four year old chose prostitution? We don't even know how young she was when her "career" began.

[midnight]

15. I've tried to ask two questions about this issue, but then

I come to the conclusion that it won't matter until we adopt a war on poverty.

[YOY]

19. Must control anger...daddy sense to beat people to pulps is rising...

n.t.

[dharmamarx]

21. Sad but it ignores the real problem

Another MSM story about third-world sex trafficking. The story is very sad, but the important questions are about the underlying causes of the poverty that produces the sex-trade. Does Cambodia not have a functioning welfare state? Do the IMF and World Bank have something to do with that?
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/211534/36
What about that Civil War Richard Nixon inflicted on Cambodia?

The corporate media loves stories about relatively powerless individuals (poor people in the third world and a couple of creeps from the first world) doing bad things, but it never wants to seriously investigate how the actions of the truly powerful have created this kind of exploitation.

[Hello_Kitty]

31. Poverty exacerbates but does not cause the sex trade.

There is a sex trade because there are people (the vast majority are men) who believe they are entitled to use other people as receptacles for their sexual urges.

[glitch]

37. Excellent point and welcome to DU. nt

[Odin2005]

22. Words fail me...

:cry:

[sasquatch]

23. I guess a 4 year old is acceptable for a Catholic priest or a Republican businessman in a pinch

:puke:

[Liquorice]

24. I really wish the media would focus more on this issue. It's such a nightmare. nt

[Christa]

26. This is the foundation mentioned

http://www.somaly.org/

ETA:

And the Body shop she started:

http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/thebodyshop/37921/

[and-justice-for-all]

34. That is awful, what sick bastards..

I am glad she was removed from that hell:

"She is now being cared for at one of the seven shelters.."

[Dorian Gray]

39. Oh my gosh

this is one of the saddest things I"ve ever heard. Thank God one of the clients had an ounce of compassion and morality and reported the four year old. And thank God for Somaly Mam, who is doing what she can to obliterate trafficking.

[windowpilot]

52. Now what would Neal Bush do. n/t

[Liberal_in_LA]

58. K&R