by Taya Kyle
While illegal, prostitution was widely practiced in Thailand. Underage prostitutes were especially desirable by johns—the customers—but the people running the brothels were savvy enough to keep the young girls and boys hidden from anyone who appeared to be a policeman or an informant. Payoffs and corruption were rampant.
As elsewhere, prostitution has a long history in Thailand. The state even operated brothels for hundreds of years. Laws punishing prostitutes were adopted in 1960, but for many years they were rarely enforced. As air travel became more and more common, Thailand became known as an international haven for those seeking paid sex, especially with young prostitutes.
In the 1990s, the government increased penalties for child prostitution, defining child as boys and girls under fifteen. There were also added strictures against trafficking—moving children into prostitution, whether inside or outside the country. The problem continued.
Brothels in Thailand run a wide gamut. At the upper end, hotels, massage parlors, and especially bars and restaurants serve a largely foreign clientele. Literally any sexual taste or perversion can be satisfied, for the right price. The owners of these “clubs” and the pimps are sometimes independents; more often, they are either part of, affiliated with, or work with crime syndicates from China, Russia, and elsewhere. The prostitutes generally come from the poorer parts of the country, especially the north, but also arrive from China, Laos, and Vietnam.
A few go into the trade of their own free will, seeing it as an alternative to poverty and wooed by the promise of easy money. It is also extremely common for children to be “recruited” from poorer areas with promises of a job and money to their family. The promises are lies, though the initial payments are welcome in the poor areas where the slavers ply their trades.
Upon arriving at the brothel, the girls and boys find themselves essentially slaves, unable to escape. In theory, many can buy their freedom back by paying off “debts” their masters claim they incur. As a general rule, though, it is extremely difficult for anyone caught in the web to escape without some sort of outside intervention, at least until they have “worked” for several years.
Sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDs are rampant. Corruption at all levels—from the police on the streets to the highest reaches of government—is endemic.
When the Parker family arrived in Thailand, the problem of underage prostitution, kidnapping, and sex slavery was acute. Church groups and aid organizations were starting to take steps against it, but the attitudes and practices that had permitted the sex slave trade to thrive remained in place.
Following the meeting, Matt spent about a year researching the problems that prevented effective intervention. To simplify, things basically came down to this:
Lack of prosecutable evidence.
The Thai police interested in making arrests needed concrete proof that girls were underage and being offered for prostitution. They were either reluctant to gather it, were paid not to, or were so easily spotted when entering a brothel that they might as well have been carrying neon signs that told the perpetrators to hide everything.
Matt and the other men on his committee came to a single conclusion:
We have to gather the evidence ourselves.
Unlike the police, foreigners could easily enter the brothels; they were, after all, the customers. Matt decided he’d find people to go undercover, pose as johns, and get the evidence themselves. Once they had it, they would turn it over to the cops.
After asking many men, he finally convinced two friends to do it.
As long as he went along.
It wasn’t going to be a joyride. Given what they wanted to do, their lives would be in danger as soon as they passed through the door. If they were even suspected of trying to gather evidence or spy on the operation, a beating would be light punishment. The gangs that controlled many of the establishments were not known for mercy.
But the danger wasn’t the biggest thing holding him back. The morality of entering a bordello loomed large. Even if he had no intention of having sex, the bars and restaurants openly displayed their wares. Think sleazy strip club, and multiply by ten.
It was a scene that his upbringing told him was barely a step from hell itself. If you believed in the Devil, this was surely a place where you could step on his tail.
He was also concerned about what entering the brothel might do to his marriage. To that point, he and Laura had a strong relationship, based on mutual trust and affection. Would temptation on his side or distrust and jealousy on hers disrupt that?
The couple sat in a coffeeshop and discussed it for hours. Their need to do good clearly outweighed the dangers.
Still . . .
They set clear boundaries—he would not sleep with a prostitute, they agreed right off.
They kept talking. Matt remained hesitant.
What would they want someone to do if their own daughter were enslaved?
Give her the chance to be free.
“If you don’t go,” asked Laura, “who will?”
Not long afterward, Matt left for a suspected brothel in Bangkok, located in the same red-light district he had seen years before with the teens.
The street was madness, a collage of temptation and corruption. Erratic traffic, drunks jostling, hookers calling out, “ladyboys”—transgender men who still have male anatomy—aggressively courting customers, the rotten smell of garbage and sweat, blaring neon lights. The sensations were overwhelming. A prostitute came up to Matt, and he froze, unable to react, unable maybe to process everything around him.
It happened again. Again, he distanced himself.
But the third time—the third time he was ready, and he smiled and fell into his role.
They talked. Maybe later, he said, noncommittally.
The men headed for the brothel, which was set up as a bar. Inside, they went in for a drink. A girl sat next to Matt. Her name was Belle—or so she claimed. She was a beauty. The only distraction to her radiant face was the paper pinned to her chest.
The number written there made it easier for a customer to purchase her services.
Matt took her hand. While he held it, she was safe; no one would use her.
Slowly, gently, he asked who she was, prodding for her story. His Thai was still rudimentary, but his two friends spoke it well enough to converse.
Belle had come from an impoverished community up north. She looked well under eighteen, though there was no way to tell what her actual age was.
By the time Belle moved on to more promising customers, she had left an indelible mark in Matt’s brain. He carried her image for years, using it as his inspiration.
Ironically, the reason they had targeted that particular bar turned out to be something of a false lead. Someone had seen photos on the wall at the back; they were of young girls, clearly underage. The writing with the photos claimed they were orphans being supported by the bar and its owner; that seemed to everyone, police and Matt included, a cover story to throw snoopers off the trail.
But it turned out it was actually true. The owner of the bar, an American expat and Vietnam veteran, sent money to the orphanage to help keep it going. Maybe it was his way of doing penance. In any event, he was actually helping those girls.
That ambiguity—the mix of good and bad—was present throughout the red-light district. Matt came to discover that the people running the bordellos were generally not as wholly evil or unconflicted as he originally thought. The madams tended to be former prostitutes themselves; a few actually seemed to care about the girls working for them.
While he strongly believed that the people involved at every level should be punished, Matt nonetheless came to see the humanity in nearly everyone. Their lives were as broken as the prostitutes’. To use religious terms, they, too, needed God’s mercy.
“I had this idea at the start, that brothels were filled with demons,” he says today. “But when I got inside, I realized it’s not true.” The customers wer
e of all ages and descriptions—a seventy-year-old woman, a twenty-something nerd who had never had sex, a father-and-son team there to end the boy’s virginity.
Broken people, desperately lonely. “If you just look at their faces, that’s what you see.”
Not that that should keep them from being punished by the law.
That first mission was enough for Matt’s two companions; they called it quits that night.
Matt, though, had found his true calling. He began working closely with the Thai police, gathering information, sometimes hitting as many as ten or a dozen brothels a night. He carried a letter in his shoe from a police chief that—he hoped—would get him out of trouble if he was arrested. Otherwise, he was unarmed and generally completely on his own.
He traveled around on a scooter, Skype-chatting with his wife as he worked his way through the underworld. His Thai grew better; his senses sharpened.
He started wearing covert recording devices, getting pictures.
Arrests began to be made. Not a lot, not nearly enough to reverse the tide. But a start.
Matt branched out, working in neighboring countries. He met others doing the same type of work, forming alliances and coalitions.
Matt and Laura started the nonprofit Exodus Road in 2012 as a way of expanding the work that Matt had begun. A loose coalition with others at first, the organization helped get equipment and funding, coordinated between the police and different groups that could provide assistance, and trained undercover agents.
The undercover work took its toll on both. In The Exodus Road, the short book recounting their days starting the project, Laura candidly recalls her feelings of repulsion at the smell of Matt’s clothes, skin, and hair after he came from a night of pretending to be a pedophile. She also writes of finding Matt in the shower crying, overcome by the memory of a child prostitute in a brothel he’d recently visited.
But they persevered. From a two-person organization that existed primarily in their thoughts and good intentions, today Exodus Road has a budget of more than $1 million, with investigators and social workers in six countries. Some 389 offenders had been arrested as of early 2018. More important, more than nine hundred former sex slaves had been liberated.
As a general rule, the organization does not “grab” prostitutes and carry them away. Rather, the investigators will typically hand over evidence to the police. Arrests are then made.
The prostitutes as well as the pimps or madams are arrested. The prostitutes are connected with social workers who follow their case through the system. Exodus Road works with the local authorities, prioritizing a long-term solution to the problem by permanently disabling the brothels and the networks that feed them.
Liberation does not necessarily bring a person peace. In Thailand, convicted prostitutes are supposed to enter government shelters and a yearlong program aimed at rehabilitation. There are some good shelters and programs; there are some bad ones. A number of the prostitutes return to their families or stay in the cities and work at more legitimate jobs once the year is up. But many former sex slaves go back to work as prostitutes; others “disappear”—either moving away, changing identities, or simply removing themselves from the authorities’ immediate attention.
Many people are disappointed to discover that so many choose to go back to prostitution. Matt, however, is philosophical. “Freedom is like an onion; there are many layers,” he says.
While faith definitely moved the Parkers into this crusade and has remained a vital part of their lives, Exodus Road itself is not a faith-based organization. Its board members, operatives, and other employees include Buddhists, Christians, and atheists. Doing the right thing and being brave in the face of evil is not a matter of religious beliefs.
They’re an energetic young couple, but they’re far from superheroes. See them on the street, and you’ll think they’re on their way to a PTA meeting. I asked them if they ever felt like quitting, and they said, “all the time.”
But I know they never will. Not while there’s more work to be done.
And there is. While the exact number of sex slaves is difficult to determine, estimates run far into the millions. And just so you don’t think that this is a problem confined to poor Asian countries, Matt estimates that there are perhaps fifty-five thousand sex slaves in the U.S.
When we spoke, his organization had just freed two of them.
To me, the problem seems daunting. But Matt and Laura break it down to somewhat more manageable levels:
It’s not about the millions. It’s about the one you help.
Amen to that.
Pioneer Abroad
Leslie Schweitzer
The words pioneer woman bring an immediate image to most minds: a sturdy twenty- or thirty-something woman from the nineteenth century, dress to the ground, sleeves rolled up, bonnet on her head.
She’s got a skillet in one hand and a harness ready for an ox and plow in the other. Three or four kids are peering out from behind her skirt; her husband, probably with some chaw in his mouth, nods approvingly in the background.
There’s nothing that a woman can’t do.
Except vote, enter politics, run a business, sign a will . . .
You get the idea.
Despite their vast accomplishments and the sweat they put into building this country, women, even pioneers, have been sorely limited through most of our history.
But that has changed in our lifetime, thanks to more modern pioneer women, including Leslie Schweitzer. Inheriting fortitude and resilience from earlier generations, women like Leslie prodded and sometimes pushed their way into what was considered a “man’s world” as the twentieth century wound down, making that world a whole lot better in the progress.
Leslie doesn’t typically wear a bonnet, and while I can picture her hitching an ox to a plow if necessary, I doubt she’s done that recently. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if she has. She’s done so much else in her life.
Leslie was one of the first American women to do business in Communist China as the country began opening up again to the West. And she didn’t stop there. A cofounder of Noble Trading Company in 1977, she and her firm helped U.S. companies sell and trade in a number of countries where trade ties at the time were rare, China, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and India among them. Her clients included the overseas arms of Pepsi and GM.
Ten years later, Leslie started Schweitzer & Associates, a company that developed consumer-product industries in developing countries. She also has owned and operated clothing factories in the Caribbean and employed more than seven hundred people at one time.
As senior trade advisor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Leslie created the TradeRoots Initiative, the only sustained national grassroots international trade education program in the country. The initiative has helped with free trade agreements in a number of countries and raised awareness of the importance of international trade to small- and medium-size American firms.
Those are only a few of the highlights from her résumé. I’m not going to go into more detail because her business acumen and accomplishments as a trailblazer, while they impress the heck out of me, pale in comparison to her heart.
And that’s what’s most important when it comes to the American University of Afghanistan, where a new generation of women—and men—are being educated thanks in part to her efforts.
Let me tell you a little bit about the university.
Known as AUAF, the school is a not-for-profit university modeled on American colleges and chartered by the Afghan government. Dr. Sharif Fayez, the country’s former education minister, founded the school in 2006. It’s been a revolutionary institution and occasional terrorist target ever since.
Born in 1946, Dr. Fayez is a scholar who published a work showing connections between the poetry of Walt Whitman, whose Leaves of Grass is considered one of the great works of American literature, and Rumi, a thirteenth-century Sufi poet and mystic. Dr. Fayez fled Afghanistan after
the Soviet invasion in 1979. A leading voice against the Taliban and Islamic extremism, he joined the Afghan government following its liberation in 2001 and worked to revamp the education system.
The school accepts students from all across the country and awards undergraduate and graduate degrees as well as professional development classes—the equivalent of certificate and continuing-education programs in the U.S. The undergraduate courses, which cover majors in math and the sciences, computers, political science and the law, are all taught in English. Afghan’s first MBA program is housed there, as is a five-year law program that partners with Stanford University.
There are roughly fifty professors drawn from more than a dozen countries as well as Afghanistan. Many of the students hold down regular jobs while attending. As at American colleges, scholarships are available to help students with tuition and other costs. Eleven percent of all the students at the university are Fulbright Scholars—a sign not only of the school’s prestige but of the students’ brainpower and determination.
Colleges in the U.S. are more than lectures and exams; so is AUAF. The university now has a soccer field and both men’s and women’s soccer teams; there are plans to build a cricket field. There’s a girls’ basketball team—though as of yet there are no other sports for the girls to play.
The university calls itself “American” because its basic structure and program is modeled after U.S. colleges. There are differences, of course—Islamic prayer rooms for men and women, for example. The school respects Islamic and Afghan values and does offer courses on Islam, but it is not a religious school per se.
Educating women is extremely controversial in the Islamic world; when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, it was grounds for execution. But the country does have a narrow tradition of empowering women through education dating at least to the 1970s. The American University builds strongly on that tradition, taking it further than perhaps any other school in the country.