by Abby Sher
Then Somaly got a humanitarian award from the Prince of Asturias in Spain. She and her family flew to Spain in first class. She had to speak in front of royalty and Nobel Peace Prize winners, and she was sure she would melt into a puddle of nerves. But she stood up on the stage and spoke about what it was like to be a Cambodian girl. What it was like to paint on a doll’s face every night and tunnel inside while the men used her body any way they wished. What it was like to see so many girls just like her.
The wild applause after Somaly’s speech filled her whole body with electricity. People were crying and cheering. She got to meet the prince and queen of Spain. They thanked her for her dedication and vision. Mobs of people asked for Somaly’s autograph.
Somaly couldn’t believe she could talk about her darkest past in front of these people and still be respected. She always thought it was her fault that she’d been sold into slavery and that she should be ashamed of what she’d done with her body.
But that day in Spain, saying it out loud, in front of this huge crowd, was a huge turning point for Somaly. She got new perspective about her mission and herself. She had been sold into servitude and treated cruelly because sex trafficking was silently accepted—not because of anything Somaly wanted or deserved.
Now she was claiming her past so she could move proudly into her present and future. She was meant to tell her story to the world. She was the only one who knew it from the inside out, the only one who could speak for all the girls still imprisoned.
With the money from Spain, Somaly finished the new shelter. Then she started on a home specifically for the little children who’d been rescued. She found some land near her parents’ old home in Thlok Chhrov, Kampong Cham Province. She built a house with a fish pond, a chicken coop, sewing machines, and weaving looms. The kids could learn how to farm or just run in the tall grasses. Best of all, Somaly’s adoptive father, Mam Khon, still taught at the village schoolhouse, and she showed her house full of young girls the crisp new uniforms they could wear with pride. She told the girls how long and hard she’d begged Grandfather for the chance to wear that same blue skirt and white shirt. How she’d washed it in the very same river.
This is how she got those little girls to trust her. Many of them were so young and frightened that they didn’t smile for months and they didn’t talk for years after she found and rescued them. But Somaly walked them through Thlok Chhrov and introduced them to the fields and the sky. Even though it was heartbreaking to see how young they were when they were abused, Somaly was exhilarated knowing they could begin their lives again.
Slowly, the girls started hearing her and hoping with her. Somaly felt proudest of all about the Kampong Cham center. Here she saw twelve- and fifteen-year-olds holding one another’s hands and weaving side by side. They called one another “sister.” The older girls helped the younger ones with schoolwork. They became the family they’d always wanted, and never had.
“No child wants to be a bad luck girl, and the bad luck is not going to touch everyone; even if you have been very badly treated, you can still prove this to them. I always tell my girls not to fight back. In contrast, please remain respectful…the people who are negative are then ashamed and start changing their concept of how we must treat one another.”
~ Somaly Mam
Milestones
Police Precinct Offices. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1999
Somaly looked out at the crowd of foreign faces—a room full of policemen and soldiers. Every set of eyes looked back at her like she was crazy. Many of the men sneered or openly laughed at her as she spoke.
Then Somaly held up a banana in one hand and a condom in the other. She demonstrated to the men how to put on a condom. There was a lot of squirming from the audience, but not as much laughing anymore. AIDS was sweeping through Cambodia by 1999. Many of the men were scared, although they would never say it out loud.
Somaly started asking questions.
How many of you had your first sexual experience in a brothel?
Why do you enjoy visiting prostitutes?
What exactly gives you sexual pleasure?
It wasn’t easy to get the policemen and soldiers to talk. She had brought Mr. Chheng with her. He was a male social worker at AFESIP. He started asking the questions with her. Maybe if the men were too angry or embarrassed to answer her, they could talk to Chheng instead.
Slowly, a few voices started floating back.
Of course I started in a brothel. Where else?
My wife orders me to go to prostitutes.
Sexual pleasure…? What is that?
In Cambodian culture, sex was always about male dominance and asserting power. There was no sense of enjoyment for the woman or the man. That’s why Somaly wanted to make these presentations. She wasn’t there to yell at the men or prove them wrong. She went to the Ministry of Defense in 1999 and said it was time to talk to the men of Cambodia about how they had been indoctrinated, too. Growing up in a world where most boys had their first sexual experiences through rape was a recipe for disaster. She wanted men to know they could change this mentality.
Some of the girls from the AFESIP shelter asked if they could come to Somaly’s lectures, too. They wanted to describe what it felt like to be forced into sex. Somaly told them it was a tricky situation and she couldn’t promise the men would listen. The girls said they wanted to go anyway.
The response was astounding. A lot of the men wept as they listened to Somaly’s survivors. They got four hundred thank-you notes in the first month of starting the program.
Thank you for telling your story.
Thank you for saying this out loud.
Thank you for the incredible work you do.
AFESIP Fair Fashion Offices. Kompong Cham, Cambodia, 2003
This time, the crowd of faces was familiar and cheerful. The girls chatted with one another and shared patterns and ideas in between workstations. Many of them had learned how to sew from Somaly’s adopted sister (from the sagging birdhouse in Thlok Chhrov). It was the first thing these survivors could focus on after the horrors of what they had been through. Learning a skill that used their minds and their hands was extremely therapeutic and healing.
Lots of garment factories were airless and had no windows. The workers were paid pennies. But Somaly’s Fair Fashion workshop was a ray of light. She looked out at the girls at their tables and felt herself beaming. She had created a safe space where survivors could see their beautiful handwork and sell their crafts.
Most important, everyone in the room wanted to be here. They wanted to thread the bobbin and feel the ratatatatat of the machines thrum in their skin. They were in this together. They each shared a common past. And they were each ready for a different future.
Gripsholm Castle. Mariefred, Sweden, 2008
The crowd of faces was bright and loud. Hands of all ages and colors of skin applauded Somaly as she walked to the podium and accepted the World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child. This was such a momentous occasion for her. Six and a half million children from all over the world voted for Somaly to get the award.
She was not only here for them, she was here because of them.
***
It wasn’t all smooth sailing and award ceremonies, though. As AFESIP grew, there were some heartbreaking setbacks. Botched raids where the police turned out to be working for the pimps. Funding cut off suddenly with no explanation. Some of the rescued women left the AFESIP shelter because they trusted only their traffickers. The scariest obstacles were the recurring threats to Somaly and her family.
She was careful to keep her girls safe. More than once, she had to hire a security team for her family. She also had to close shelters sometimes and build big walls around them when she opened their doors again.
Even so, through the years, AFESIP took its hits and came back ready for the fight. Somaly made sure she sat down with every young girl who walked into an AFESIP shelter. She told them that they could come and get medic
al treatment and then leave, or stay for as long as they wanted. She told them they were safe, they were loved, they had their whole lives ahead of them.
Somaly was living proof that this was true. That anything was possible.
“Life is never ended here in the brothels. Life is in your hand. You can manage it as what you want. The most challenging part is starting new life and forgetting the past.”
~ Somaly Mam
Voices for Change
In 2010, Somaly started a program called Voices for Change. The Voices for Change are girls who were once trafficked or sexually exploited. With Somaly’s help, they became survivors.
And now they are change makers.
These young women see firsthand how Somaly fought her way out of her past, how she went from victim to advocate. They’ve decided they want to become advocates, too. They want to stand up with Somaly and say This happened to me and it should never happen again.
Somaly is very clear with the girls who want to join Voices for Change. Advocacy work is not easy. She doesn’t want any of the girls to feel like they have to do it. They often have to face their worst demons by speaking out. Shame. Fear. Reliving nightmares of what can never be undone.
Somaly knows this because she still faces these same demons herself. She is constantly being flown all over the globe to promote her cause and receive awards. She was named one of Vital Voices’ Global Leaders and Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. She’s opened shelters in multiple countries, too.
But that does not mean it gets easier to share her story. Even today, each time she begins to speak, the words feel as sharp and close as if she were meeting Grandfather for the first time. She does a lot of meditation and work with a psychologist. Most of all, she learns from the love and courage of the girls she saves.
More than four thousand Cambodian women and another three thousand in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam owe their freedom to Somaly. Every time she gets up to relay her history, she thinks of them. She hopes she can reach more girls who may be too fearful to come forward themselves, or feel too “dirty” to see their worth.
Voices for Change has new members and momentum every day. Somaly leads by example. Sometimes when Somaly travels for awareness events, she brings young women of the Voices for Change with her. They tell their stories, too. This way people can see that it’s real girls, no different than you or me, who are fighting this fight. The future of human rights is now their life’s mission.
Back in Cambodia, the Voices for Change help newly rescued girls who come to the shelter, shocked and confused. Voices for Change members guide their new “sisters,” filling in the intake forms and holding hands. Many of the girls in Voices for Change get trained to speak with magistrates and judges, too. They go with Somaly to hear court cases against traffickers and help advocate for victims’ rights to protect young women.
Each condom brought to a brothel.
Each girl walking into an AFESIP clinic for free medical treatment.
Each court case where a trafficker is convicted—there were thirteen in 2012!
These are the victories of Somaly and her Voices for Change. This is the way we make a new world.
And it all started with one little girl who strung a hammock between two trees in a forest that she called home.
“Hope comes true when you see thousands of girls are in your hands and they are smiling. Everyone can’t do everything, but each of you can do one thing to end sex slavery. It starts from you today.”
~ Somaly Mam
Minh Dang
“On my Twitter profile I’m like a list of things. I’m a lover. I’m a friend… an artist. And I don’t really want to carry rocks around all the time, but, yeah, I’m a rock collector.”
~ Minh Dang
Rock Collector
The houses on Minh Dang’s street all looked a lot alike. This was San Jose, California, in the 1990s. Instead of front lawns or swing sets, many people in her neighborhood had a yard full of white quartz rocks and rosebushes. The neighbors smiled at one another before going in and closing their front doors. Nobody got in anyone else’s business or asked too many questions.
Minh spent a lot of time with those rocks in her front yard. They were as bright as stars. Sometimes she pretended they were pieces of the moon or precious gems she could dig up like buried treasure. Minh wasn’t allowed to go any farther than her yard to play, so sitting there in that sea of rocks was the only way she could find fun.
When no one was looking, she talked to those rocks, too. She told them they were beautiful and she gave them names. She picked through carefully and filled shoeboxes with her absolute favorites—the ones that were extra sparkly or had a funny-looking zigzag stripe or maybe a side so smooth that it warmed her hand from the California sun. Minh took good care of those rocks. Her collection grew and grew. She hid her shoeboxes in a corner of the garage. She didn’t want them to get in the way and make anyone in her house angry.
It was hard for Minh to figure out exactly what made her parents so angry all the time. She worked hard to follow the rules. She got good grades at her public school and was a star on her soccer team. She came home every day and did her homework first thing. She kept her mouth shut. But still, she was always in trouble. Only, her parents never called it trouble. They never called it anything.
It was just part of her day, like sunrise or sunset. Every time Minh climbed into bed, she feared that her father would come for her in the dark. Many nights, from the time she was three years old, her father visited her in her bedroom and sexually abused her. With each visit, Minh was overwhelmed with fear and pain. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, but she knew it was wrong. If she cried out or said no, he beat her. And when he was finished, Minh’s mom came in and beat her anyway. She called Minh horrible names and blamed her for what was happening. She treated Minh like a perpetrator instead of a victim. Like an enemy instead of her child.
Both of her parents made it clear that if Minh said anything to anyone, they would send her away to Vietnam (where they were both born), or kill her.
That’s another reason why those rocks in the front yard were so special to Minh. They were really the only things she could talk to. Even if they weren’t people, they felt calm and they seemed to listen to her. They were her best friends; her only friends.
Then one day, when Minh was about ten years old, her mom went looking for something in the garage and Minh heard her yell, “What the *#$@ are these doing here?”
Minh tried to run in and save her rocks, but her mom didn’t even wait for an answer. She just opened the shoeboxes and scattered the insides all over the yard. It didn’t matter that Minh had picked each one and placed them just so. It didn’t matter that she’d packed them in rock “families” and knew all their cracks and edges.
Once her mom went back inside, Minh tried to collect the same rocks again. There were thousands to choose from, but she worked as carefully and as quickly as possible, apologizing to the ones she had to leave behind. She raced to get the rock moms and dads and the little rock children reunited before sundown.
That night her dad raped her again. That night her mom beat her again for “making him do it.”
But the worst part to Minh was the next day when she came home from school and saw that her shoeboxes were empty again. She ran out to the yard and began digging. She begged the rocks to hold on until she found them. Her fingers got scratched and raw as she searched and searched. Then she frantically crammed the shoeboxes in the garage and scrambled to get her homework done before her dad came for her in the dark.
It kept going like this: Rape. Beat. School. Search. Rape. Beat. School. Search.
And then Minh came home from school one day, saw her empty shoeboxes again, and something in her broke. She tore through the rocks outside. None of them looked familiar or beautiful to her anymore. She was so tired of digging, so confused and lonely and hopeless.
Now it was Minh’s t
urn to get angry.
She threw the empty boxes down and started screaming at the rocks.
“I hate you! I don’t need you! You’re just stupid, stupid rocks!”
She knew these words so well by now. She was just echoing everything that had been screamed at her before.
FICTION:
The sex industry is very secretive. Ladies of the evening stand on street corners or back alleys and proposition people in seedy bars.
FACT:
There are tons of ads in newspapers and online that make it clear they’re selling sex. Hint: anything that says “barely legal” isn’t legal at all. Village Voice Media makes an estimated $22 million each year from these ads. Craigslist.com and Backpage.com are also big hotspots for ads. And there are things called “john boards” that list places where people can find commercial sex nearby.
Here’s the Deal …
When Minh turned ten, her father took her to a local café in the Bay area. In the back were private rooms where Minh was told to wait. Soon a man came into Minh’s room and raped her. Minh knew this feeling all too well. She felt faceless, nameless, and lifeless, lying under the stranger like a piece of furniture.
As she was getting dressed, Minh heard her father make a deal with the café owner. He promised to bring Minh to this café regularly so people could pay to use her body however they liked. The café/brothel owner would get a percentage for handling the clients, Minh’s parents would get the rest. Minh’s father told him proudly that she was very obedient.
Minh couldn’t feel her legs as she walked out of that back room. She couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. All she knew was that she’d just been sold—sold by the two people who were supposed to love, nurture, and protect her from all danger.