Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a two-part article about child trafficking in Cambodia. Look for the conclusion in tomorrow’s Meridian Magazine.
According to traditional Asian beliefs, sleeping with a virgin or child will bring happiness, cure sickness, and make a man stronger. Women and young girls with no education or other skills are caught in a generational cycle of sex trafficking, sex work, abuse, and disease. This is a common story in the poor neighborhoods of Cambodia. This is where sex and child trafficking begins, as does the story of a non-governmental organization that is working to end it.
The Riverkids Project is working to keep families together by giving women and girls an education and vocational training, while also providing children with an education, meals, and boarding. Riverkids sends social workers out into the slums to identify high-risk families who are living without food or options, and helps give them new options.
Often when a family cannot support itself, another scenario is for a young child to be sent out into the streets to collect trash for money. When a family like this is identified, Riverkids will put the children into school, and “pay” the family for the lost wages. All of this to keep families together and prevent sex and child trafficking by giving them new options.
True Stories You Wish You Didn’t Hear
A twelve-year-old girl named Channy showed up alone at a camp for girls at Riverkids. She is there in spite of her mother’s wishes that she not attend. Her mother and stepfather have plans for her. They need her to work, taking an old rice sack out at night and filling it up with trash to sell. But this young girl wants to attend school, and so she has gone alone to Riverkids for help.
Riverkids is able to give her a “food box” to take home each month, to make up for the income the family loses if Channy attends school. At twelve years old she barely knew how to read and write in her native tongue. She tried to learn, but kept falling asleep in school. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that her parents had her working at night. Riverkids stepped in again and asked the parents to sign a formal document stating that they would not force her to work any longer.
But she had missed too much school already, and so she was enrolled in a vocational training program instead. Unfortunately, things at home got worse. Her mother had stopped working and had begun gambling again. And then it was discovered that the mother was selling some of the food Riverkids was sending home to help the family, including the baby’s milk powder.
Before long, the mother refused Riverkids’ social workers into their home (shack). Fearing for Channy’s well-being, she was taken into the weekly boarding program at Riverkids. But her mother showed up at the gate, crying and begging for her daughter to come back. Silently, Channy packed her few clothes and went home.
Channy dropped out of her vocational training, needing a job to help support her family. She had a baby brother that needed to be fed. Along with several other young girls, she was hired by a local gambling den to hand out drinks and keep the customers “happy.” It paid four times more than a typical waitressing job, and infinitely more than collecting trash on the street. The seedy environment was hard on such a young girl, but Channy said she was fine.
Meanwhile, in Channy’s slum neighborhood, a single mother had appeared. Riverkids attempted to get to know her and understand her. She claimed to be just another mother in the neighborhood, making friends where she could. But before long she began recruiting the girls over 16. She was not in a hurry. She was careful and methodical about her activities.
She began telling the girls about a good job they could get at a hotel. Word circulated about this great new job at a hotel and the young girls were lining up, hoping for the work. Riverkids stepped in, begging the girls not to do it, and offering shelter and alternatives to this trafficker’s offer. But they didn’t listen.
They were all virgins. The men who bought the right to rape them for a weekend probably paid at least $2,000 each, more for the younger and prettier girls.
Channy brought home $700.
The trafficker likely made more than that, and the hotel took a cut as well. Channy’s was the smallest cut. Her mother was able to pay off her gambling debts, bought a new TV, and fixed up their small home.
Before long the money ran out. The mother began collecting trash to sell. Channy got a job at a beer garden. She’s only seventeen years old and supporting her family entirely from sex work.
Her little brother is now almost old enough for kindergarten, and Riverkids is ready to accept him when he is. And they still hope to bring Channy back in for training, to get her out of sex work.
To break the generational cycle of sex and child trafficking, the families must be fixed. The families must first be helped with access to food, education, and vocational training. At Riverkids that is what they offer — the promise of hope. They won’t give up on the children, no matter how dire the circumstances.
“The sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife. We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.” – The Family: A Proclamation to the World
Family
When all is said and done, Riverkids isn’t just providing education, food, a safe harbor, and a vocation. It is doing everything that it can to keep families together. They believe that if families are kept strong and can provide for themselves, child trafficking will decrease.
Riverkids is working hard in Cambodia to provide families with a chance to stay together. Child trafficking is an ugly thing. It makes for snappy headlines with heartstring-tugging stories, but, the truth of child trafficking in Cambodia is that most of the children in Riverkids would rather be sold to support their family than be placed for adoption and lose their family.
At Riverkids the full truth is told — the good, the bad, and the heartbreakingly ugly. And the question is how do we stop child trafficking from happening?
Understanding Trafficking
The root of trafficking (whether it is sex, child, or human) is the idea that an individual can use his or her neighbor, friend, child, sibling, or community member to make a personal profit.
The idea that people equal money is the seed of trafficking.
Trafficking does not always mean cargo containers, dark rooms, and slavery. It often means selling your daughter or son’s virginity just one time. Or being enslaved to a beer garden, too afraid of the beatings and abuse if you try to escape.
The main problem is that the United Nations (UN) definition of trafficking is written in commercial or business language, and this is the greatest weakness of the definition for public awareness-raising. The people that are most at-risk for trafficking cannot understand the high level language used to define it. We need a definition that highlights the premise behind trafficking that is no different from the premise behind slavery — the idea of persons as personal property.
Trafficking would cease if people were not willing to accept that persons are items available for sale or to be used for personal profit. The UN definition avoids this unpleasant concept by using the phrase “control over another person,” which in a very real sense acknowledges (even condones) the right of one person to take “receipt of payment” for another human being. The UN has not gone far enough to define and condemn human, child, and sex trafficking. The UN has left too many families at risk.
Some 1.8 million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade, though this figure is thought to be much higher due to the underground dealings of the traffickers. — International Labour Organization (ILO), 2002
Why Families Sell Their Children
One father asked for help, desperate because his son was dying. Desperately poor, he had nothing to sell except his teenage daughter. Riverkids helped him get a loan and a job from his former boss. His son died soon after, but the father had not lost both of his children. A family is broken, but also saved.
A grandmother had been sold as a young girl, and in turn, she sold her own daughter to a brothel when she reached puberty. Her daughter then sold her own first child to a childless neighbor, and then her second child to a trafficker. The baby was rescued just before she was taken by motorcycle across the border to Malaysia, and is now growing up in a family-style orphanage.
End of part 1. Look for the conclusion of this article in Tuesday’s Meridian Magazine.
Erin Ann McBride is a writer, dreamer, blogger, and service volunteer. Equal parts Mary Poppins, Carrie Bradshaw, and Mother Theresa, she goes where the wind blows, writes about single life, and is devoted to helping others. You can read more about what defines her and her current travels in Cambodia at the Story of a Nice Mormon Girl.
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