The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam

The Road of Lost Innocence is the heart breaking memoir of Somaly Mam.  Somaly was born in the Bou Sra Village of North East Cambodia in 1970 or 1971. The Phong people there are part of an old tribe of mountain people living in primitive conditions. Abandoned by her parents and then her grandmother, she raises herself by foraging for food in the forest and a little help from the other villagers.  When Somaly is about 9 or 10 and older man shows up and promises he will help her find her fathers family.  She is instructed to call him "Grandfather" out of respect.  Grandfather takes her to Thlok Chhrov and makes her his domestic servant.  He beats her and rents her labor out to others as well.  She finds some refuge in the local school teacher there and his family becomes sort of her adoptive parents.  She stays with them as much as she can to avoid Grandfathers beatings.  One night grandfather sends her to get some oil from the Chinese merchant in town.  The merchant rapes her and she later learns that grandfather sold her virginity to him.  At age 14, grandfather forces her into marriage to a soldier who violently beats her.  With her husband gone fighting for long periods of time she runs out of money for food and begins working at the clinic.  The doctors there preyed upon the girls and she is raped again by the chief doctor.  Grandfather shows up a few times to request money from her.  The last time he comes he tells her to pack her things they are going to visit an aunty in Phom Penh.  .

The aunty it turns out is a brothel owner and grandfather has sold her to the woman.  There she is beaten, tied up and locked in the cellar and had snakes poured over her to break her will.  She manages to escape once, but is found and brought back to the brothel.  Her punishment is to be beaten, locked up and covered with maggots. 

Somaly writes:  "The clients were horrible.  To them we were meat...Some of them like hurting us and did it for sport.  They were dirty.  They stank.  In my memory, their dirtiness is the most repugnant thing.  That and the smell"

Somaly eventually meets a humanitarian worker who gives her money and helps her leave the brothel. 

The injustice that occurs in robbing a young girl of her childhood is horriffic. In this book Somaly Mam brings up a couple of issues related to human trafficking that just wreck me.

1. Men believe that they will be cured of AIDS by having sex with a virgin.  This is why girls are being trafficked younger and younger.  Brothel owners can get a much higher price for a virgin because that is where the demand is.
2. Because a virgin will fetch a higher price it is common practice that after a young girl has had been victimized, she will be sewn up so she can be sold over and over again as a virgin.
3. In Cambodia, it is not uncommon for a young girl to be sold into sexual slavery by their own family.  

I can't even begin to imagine the horror of these things that happened to Somaly Mam.  Many people would lose their will to live.  But she has fought back and gone on to save over 4,000 women from sexual slavery through AFESIP (her organization in Cambodia) and the Somaly Mam Foundation which she co-founded.  She is an incredible woman and such an inspiration.