Breaking Free

by Abby Sher

  Praise for Breaking Free

  “The harrowing real-life stories of three girls who turned their experiences as sex-trafficked children into a fight to destroy the practice…The girls’ stories could be too devastating to read save for each tale’s conclusion, detailing the efforts these women have made to rescue girls and eliminate childhood slavery… Harrowing, yes—and inspiring.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “If we want real, systemic change, we must listen to survivors. Abby Sher shares these survivors’ truths with care and compassion, highlighting the courage and resilience of each woman. This is an excellent read for anyone who believes that ending exploitation is possible.”

  —Lauren Hersh, Equality Now

  “This book is invaluable for young people to learn about not just the horrors of sex trafficking but also how victims can become survivors and finally leaders.”

  —Prof. Ruchira Gupta, Founder and President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide

  “Breaking Free is a courageous and compassionate exploration of a deeply difficult subject matter, filled with hope and solutions as well as important truths. I would say it should be required reading for every high school, but really, it should be required reading for every HUMAN.”

  —Alysia Reiner, Actress (Orange Is the New Black)

  “These searing, harrowing stories tell us the dark truth of the lives of enslaved girls and women, our own sisters and daughters. In Abby Sher’s generous, thoughtful prose, they also become tales of unbelievable courage, hope, and triumph.”

  —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She’s Not There

  “They speak for the voiceless, the scared, and the still enslaved. They speak for people everywhere with a dream to better the world… This is a must read for everyone.”

  —Missy Taylor, reviewer at A Midsummer Night’s Read

  Copyright © 2014 by Abby Sher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner.

  Print edition ISBN: 978-1-4380-0453-2

  eISBN: 978-1-4380-9255-3

  All inquiries should be addressed to:

  Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.

  250 Wireless Boulevard

  Hauppauge, NY 11788

  www.barronseduc.com

  Some names have been changed in this book to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

  Contents

  Preface

  Somaly Mam

  Minh Dang

  Maria Suarez

  We are all part of the movement

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  for Samantha,

  who taught me how we are all connected

  Preface

  Don’t call me hero. Call me human.

  When I started this book, I thought sex trafficking happened only far away—in small villages with no running water and maybe the occasional light bulb for electricity. I know that sounds ignorant and kind of snooty. Let me explain: I grew up in a sleepy town in Westchester County, New York, where my greatest fear was someone else wearing the same dress as me to the junior prom. I knew all my neighbors, my mom was in the PTA, and I was taught that I’d be safe as long as I didn’t take candy from strangers.

  I was so wrong.

  Sex trafficking happens all over the world, including here. Sex trafficking is defined as the act of forcing, coercing, or conning someone into performing any sexual act. According to U.S. law, anyone younger than eighteen who is selling or being sold for sex acts is a victim of sex trafficking, whether it’s done by force or not.

  The girls and women in these pages are not only brave survivors of sex trafficking; they are also inspiring leaders in the anti-trafficking movement. After they broke free, they chose to dedicate their lives to activism to help other sex-trafficking victims become empowered survivors, too. They each work every day with the hope of creating a world where sex trafficking has been stopped once and for all. They speak to everyone from convicted traffickers to the leaders of the United Nations, because they know that change can only happen when we all work together.

  The first story comes from Somaly Mam, who grew up in the deep forests of Cambodia. After being abandoned by her parents, she was sold into sexual slavery by someone who claimed to be her grandfather. Today, she runs The Somaly Mam Foundation, one of the most successful organizations in the anti-trafficking movement—freeing and educating girls and women just like her.

  The second account is from Minh Dang, a young woman who grew up in a quiet suburb of California. Behind closed doors, her parents were abusing her and selling her to local brothels for most of her life. Minh is now very well known for her work as an anti-trafficking advocate and recently got an award at the White House for being a Champion of Change.

  The third tale is from Maria Suarez, a Mexican immigrant who was not only held captive by her trafficker in the United States for several years, but was then imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit. The first thing Maria did after getting out of prison was to start counseling victims of abuse and trafficking. She is now starting the Maria Suarez Foundation, which will prevent abuse and rescue and rehabilitate survivors.

  For every person in these pages, there are thousands more. I met a lot of survivors, activists, lawyers, and counselors who talked to me but didn’t want to be quoted in this book because it could jeopardize someone’s safety. A lot of girls and women who are just breaking free of the sex-trafficking nightmare cannot risk being named. But even when I didn’t quote them in these pages, I did hear their stories gratefully, and I hope I do justice to their words about what it was like to get out, how they want the world to see them, and where they need to go from here.

  Everyone who agreed to be named in this book did so willingly. Sometimes I used pseudonyms when people requested them. When I couldn’t be in the same room as someone to hear her story—like with Somaly Mam—we shared ideas over e-mail. I wrote Somaly’s story as if I were inside her head, so I could be as close as possible to her experience. But of course, we can never know exactly what anyone is thinking, so it’s important to note that while every facet of the story is true, it is my interpretation of Somaly’s journey.

  With Minh and Maria, I had the great privilege of sitting next to them in cafés as they relayed their stories. It was hard for me to believe that these events really happened to them and that they were here to tell me their tales. How could these women who look calm, cool, and even hopeful be sitting here with me, sipping milkshakes while reliving their harrowing pasts?

  It’s much easier to see survivors of sex trafficking as superhuman warriors, or their stories as too horrible to be true, but that only makes it easier to think of sex trafficking as someone else’s problem. Superheroes wear jetpacks and capes and appear in comic books. They don’t need help, except for maybe a sidekick to dust them off when they fall.

  Talking to these women made it clear that I had to rethink my image of them and of myself. As I often heard them say, most importantly: We are human, just like you. No matter where we come from, no matter what brought us to today, we are not so different at all.

  We all get skinned knees and cry. We all have at least one knock-knock joke that makes us laugh. We all hurt and heal and live in frightening uncertainty, though it looks different to everybody. And we can make this world a lot brighter if we’re honest and loving. To make a real difference, we have to listen and start seeing how we are one and the same.

  Somaly and I have both found the most intense calm in the rush of a waterfall. We both feel loved when someone sings us a lullaby. While I never had to fend for myself in the woods like her, I do know what it’s like to
lose a parent and ache from loneliness.

  Minh and I both collect stationery and stickers. Just because Minh’s parents started selling her for sex on a street corner when she was ten years old, while mine fed me chicken soup in a white house with tulips in our garden, doesn’t mean that we are members of different species.

  Maria and I have the same favorite dessert: peanut butter milkshakes. Maria earned her GED in prison at the same time I got to perform in the spring play in high school. That doesn’t make either of our educations fuller or more meaningful.

  These women didn’t break free from sex trafficking because of any superpowers. They didn’t get to fly away in a rocket ship or on some magic carpet. They made it out because they are and always will be human. We all deserve to be treated as humans, not as property. And when nobody was treating them humanely, they found a single friend, a mentor, or an inner voice that screamed I believe in you!

  Though the first story comes from a small village with no running water or light bulbs, I hope you’ll still see how Somaly’s hopes, dreams, and fears could be any little girl’s—anywhere in the world. I hope you’ll see how the cycle of human trafficking affects us all, and that to stop it we must believe in one another and in ourselves.

  I hope you’ll read these words and believe that we all can and will break free.

  This is how it starts, by reading one story and seeing how it’s your story, too.

  And yours.

  And yours.

  And mine.

  And ours.

  Somaly Mam

  “Of course you can’t forget it, but I am sure that you can forgive and turn a page of your life with new light and hope.”

  ~ Somaly Mam

  A Forest Called Home

  For Somaly Mam, the most wonderful time was when the rice harvest was done. Many villages in the forests of Cambodia came together then. There was wild dancing and singing around a bonfire so tall it licked the sky. The elders sacrificed a buffalo to the native spirits, and everyone passed around big jugs of rice wine, sipping it through bamboo straws. Somaly loved these harvest celebrations so much. Here she was part of a family. It didn’t matter if it was not her real mother or father or sister or brother. She was a little girl surrounded by people who loved her.

  While the singing was winding down, Somaly strung a hammock between two trees. She lay down and watched the bonfire smoke swirl around the moon. She felt like she was floating on everyone’s song. Festival nights were her favorite because she could hear the stars laughing. She knew she was safe in this forest she called home.

  Somaly was born in a rural village called Bou Sra around 1970. She never knew the exact month or year. She didn’t even know what her name was then. Her parents left her as a baby when a civil war was breaking out, but the war never came to Bou Sra. It was a quiet pocket of land among the towering trees and the roaring waterfalls of northeastern Cambodia.

  In the center of the village was a circle of bamboo huts. Everyone inside those huts looked after one another. Even though Somaly had no roof to call her own, and no one to call her daughter, she knew she would always have food to eat and a floor to sleep on during the rainy season. She didn’t try to figure out why her parents abandoned her, or how she could have lived a different life if they’d stayed. She couldn’t live in what ifs or else she would get too sad.

  All the children in Bou Sra got to run through the forest naked or in clothes they made out of leaves and vines. Somaly was a great forager. She knew which mushrooms were safe to eat, which insects were the meatiest, and how to follow a bee to its honey source without getting stung. Whenever she caught a woodland animal, she brought it to a kind man named Taman so he could cook it for her.

  Taman and his wife and children always made room for Somaly in their one-room hut. They called her Non, or “Little One.” Somaly treasured those nights in their cheery home. She loved it when Taman’s wife bathed her. After the bath, Taman’s wife rubbed pig’s fat into Somaly’s hair so it felt smooth and warm. She also sang beautiful songs that Somaly tucked deep inside her skin. Those nights were Somaly’s only memories of being loved and held by a mom. Even if it wasn’t her own.

  Somaly lived in Bou Sra for around nine years. In the rest of Cambodia, the civil war kept gaining steam. Most Cambodians called this time The Troubles. The Khmer Rouge political party and a brutal dictator named Pol Pot took over with their loyal soldiers. About one in five people were executed or starved to death. Practically everyone was forced into some sort of labor camp. Pol Pot closed schools and hospitals. He forbade anyone to read, drive cars, or even wear glasses—anything that he thought of as too modern or threatening to his complete control. Bou Sra wasn’t modern at all. The people of Bou Sra had no money, no medicine, nothing connecting them to the Western world. So Pol Pot left them unharmed.

  Somaly wasn’t fighting in any war, but she did have a vicious enemy called loneliness. Besides the harvest festivals and nights with Taman’s family, it was hard always fending for herself. When the other children were called home in the evening, Somaly had to invent her own playmates and games. She played hide and seek with small animals. She climbed to the highest limbs of each tree in one swoop. Sometimes she just stood still under the waterfalls for hours as the water pounded into the rocks and the sky tumbled by in a rush of speckled sunlight.

  At night, in her hammock under the inky sky, Somaly asked the birds to tell her bedtime stories. She told her deepest secrets and hopes to the treetops. She liked to imagine their branches were her mother’s arms. Their leaves fluttering in lullabies sang just for her.

  “I always feel hope even in the darkness, because I think when you are still alive, even for [a] few more minutes, you have a chance to have hope. Without hope, how can you survive?”

  ~ Somaly Mam

  Blue Rubber Flip-Flops

  When Somaly was about nine years old, Taman introduced her to an older man who said to call him Grandfather. This was a way of showing him respect as an elder, and Somaly believed he could in fact be her grandfather. Grandfather also said he would return Somaly to her parents if she followed him out of the forest. He seemed kind, and Taman said it was a good idea because nobody in Bou Sra could really look after her. So, Somaly left with him.

  Grandfather was completely silent as they walked together for days. She didn’t know if she should try to talk to him or ask him how he knew her parents. She wanted to be respectful, but she was also very eager to know where they were going and to get there already.

  Pretty soon, Grandfather made it clear even without words that this trip was not what she’d expected. They came to a crowd that was gathering around a logging truck. Somaly had never seen a truck before and she backed away. Grandfather scowled at her and swung a fist into her face. Then he hauled her onto the truck as if she were nothing more than a stack of logs, too.

  As she rubbed her sore cheek, she began to realize what was really going on. This man was no grandfatherly figure, and he was not here to help her. She was days and miles away from anyone or anything familiar, and getting farther by the minute.

  When they got off the truck, they arrived at a crumbling bamboo hut in a village called Thlok Chhrov. Grandfather told her she was his servant now. She had to cook, clean, wash his clothes, and fetch his water from the Mekong River in heavy metal buckets. The buckets cut into the backs of her legs, making them hot and swollen. Grandfather also made Somaly cook and clean for his neighbors, so he would have money for drinking and gambling.

  Sometimes at night, Somaly woke up to find Grandfather’s hands climbing up her chest. Whenever this happened, she bolted out the door. She ran to the riverbank to hide in a docked fishing boat or under a pile of dry rice stalks. She didn’t dare tell anyone what was going on. Most of the people in Thlok Chhrov shouted insults at Somaly because her skin was darker than theirs and because she was too thin from not having enough to eat. She waited until the deep of night to talk to her new best friend, the river.<
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  Somaly asked the river to guide her and protect her. The water babbled back but it gave her no answers. She knew she could not give up hope, but who would come to rescue this raggedy orphan with dark skin and no name besides Little One?

  She found her first flicker of hope in a pair of blue rubber flip-flops with thorns and rocks poking through the heels.

  One of the old women who hired Somaly to fetch her water from the river every morning saw Somaly’s sore feet and put the blue flip-flops by her door. When Somaly showed up one morning, the woman didn’t say a word. She just pointed to the shoes and smiled. There were two big holes in the heels and the flip-flops barely stayed on Somaly’s feet, but she loved them.

  Pock, pock, pock.

  Somaly marched along the woman’s mud floor and laughed at the silly sound of the bottoms slapping against it. Somaly didn’t know how to thank her. Servants were supposed to stay silent always. She hoped her smile was enough.

  Pock, pock, pock, pock.

  It was the most noise she made from the day Grandfather brought her to this miserable village. Visiting the old woman and wearing those flip-flops even for an hour each morning became the highlight of Somaly’s day.

  FICTION:

  An “orange woman” is a young girl who sells oranges in the public gardens of Cambodia.

  FACT:

  Whenever a man buys an orange, he also buys the right to fondle the girl. Add another twenty-five cents and he can have sex with her, too.

  The Sagging Birdhouse

  Somaly was very careful not to get in anybody’s way in Thlok Chhrov. She did her work diligently and talked only to the Mekong River about how homesick and lost she felt. But there was a boy who worked in the fields nearby, and he often hid in the rice stalks, too. One day he told Somaly in whispers that he knew a place where they could get rice and broth and the people were so kind. Somaly had to swear to keep it a secret before he would let her come.