Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
men buy sex from prostitutes on vacation at least as often as old men. One study found that
twenty-seven years was the average age of the 80,000 Italian men who travel abroad for sex.
Male tourists traveling to Cambodia for sex ranged in age from twenty-eight to sixty-eight,
according to one study, and they come to Cambodia because law enforcement is lax and
sex is cheap.
“Visitors taking a trip as part of a tour group inevitably ask their guide where to go for
sex services,” said one agent in a Phnom Penh study, adding that they delivered sex work-
ers for the tourists. “The tour guides are there to help. . . . the customer is king.”
That demand is met by girls, boys and young women who are mostly held against their
will, drugged and beaten into submission. The sadism has been chronicled by human
rights campaigners who have documented whippings, burnings, live burials and repeated
rapes while the girl is handcuffed or tied to a bed. The most hair-raising and eloquent testi-
monies have been written by the women themselves.
Somaly Mam, a Cambodian woman, has told her story in a stark memoir, The Road
of Lost Innocence . Somaly tells how she was forced into prostitution when she was twelve
years old and became a sex slave. She was brutally tortured and raped almost daily and was
suicidal until other girls inspired her to flee. She escaped and over time set up a nonprofit
organization that frees underage children from brothels, with the cooperation of the po-
lice, and then rehabilitates them.
She says it is inspiring for her to help young girls. What is striking is that sex tourism
is so prevalent in Cambodia today that Somaly Mam is one of Cambodia's most famous
women, at home and abroad. In the first months of 2012 alone she spoke at the United
Nations and met First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House.
Somaly Mam was not in Phnom Penh during my two research trips, so I visited her
center to rehabilitate former prostitutes with her assistant Lin Sylor. The center charges
a $100 visitors' fee. Even though I never pay for interviews, in this instance I paid $50 as
a courtesy and since the center said the fees help cover the costs of caring for the young
women.
The compound, on the outskirts of the city, is close to idyllic. When I arrived several
dozen young women were in classrooms learning sewing, hairdressing and computer
skills. Others were taking remedial reading and writing in the Khmer language. All were
described as women liberated from sex slavery. They stayed about two years and no one
was held against her will. But I was forbidden to verify this information.
Our first stop was the kitchen, where four young women were preparing lunch. I struck
up a conversation with a woman who introduced herself as Sreya and said she was twenty-
six years old. Then a large Cambodian woman came up to me and said our conversation
had to end. “It is too traumatic for these girls to talk about their former lives,” she said.
I turned to Lin Sylor, my escort, who said I would not be able to interview any of these
young women about their past despite promises to the contrary. I could ask them about
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