Little Shoes on Brothel Doorsteps

Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.

Close to 100,000 girls are right now enslaved in Cambodia by sex tourism, pornography, forced child marriages and prostitution. The number of these girls who have been sold into the sex trade by members of their own families is shockingly high. Imagine the impact that would have on a little girl’s soul. Not only is her innocence taken from her, but she feels she can’t trust her own family. A typical response is to turn to drugs and forget the pain. Diseases like AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections are common. If she somehow escapes and goes home, her family and friends turn their backs on her because of her profession.

So what can we do?


One of the root issues behind trafficking and child sexual exploitation is poverty. Traffickers know where the poorest communities are, and they know that people are desperate enough to do whatever it takes to provide for their families. They trick parents into sending their daughters to work as ‘maids’ or ‘waitresses’ or ‘nannies’ in the bigger cities, where they are instead sold into a bars and brothels, often forced to sleep with up to 30 men each night.

So Viva is working with StandOut International, which is a charity founded by the members of Christian band Bluetree, and our city-wide network of local projects and churches in Phnom Penh to change this situation. (In fact, Bluetree’s song ‘God of this City’, which is sung in thousands of churches around the world, was inspired during a gig in a southeast Asian bar just like the ones I’m describing.) Together we’re helping relieve some of the poverty in Cambodia through a programme called Doorsteps, specifically aimed at keeping little shoes off the doorsteps of brothels.

We know that education and awareness is key, and so we have helped local projects to offer vocational training programmes for teenagers and families so that they don’t have to look to other more desperate ways of making a living. The network is vital in identifying individual projects who can help offer education and meals and help with housing to those who are struggling. A help-line has been started up, so that children can call in if they spot abuse or suspect a trafficker. A shelter is also being provided, which houses and cares for the sadly high number of girls who have already been trafficked but have managed to escape or return to their community.

Another cause of sexual slavery in Cambodia is the low status of girls. The network is teaching projects, churches and local community leaders about the intrinsic value of girls, and how to protect them against abuse and trafficking. They’re realising that the responsibility for children is theirs, and that anti-trafficking efforts can hardly succeed without them.

Unfortunately, many of Cambodia’s national leaders don’t get this. In fact, according to World Vision Cambodia, some of the country’s top Tourism Department officials are ‘in bed’ with sex traffickers, thanks to bribes and general government corruption. The disheartening truth is that a large part of Cambodia’s GDP comes from tourism, and a large part of that tourism is sex tourism.

So we’ve got a big job ahead of us. Rescuing girls from brothels is wonderful. But stopping them from ending up there is even better. If that’s going to be attempted, we need to work together to build up Cambodian society, helping people lift themselves out of poverty and teaching them the value of girls. Nobody can do that alone, no matter how big they are! Local projects, churches, international aid organisations, government officials, and children and their families need to work together, and already as we begin to do that I’m excited by the amazing changes that are taking place.


Phnom Penh


Want to know more about how to get involved with Viva as we help people work together to fight this kind of child sexual exploitation? Go to www.viva.org/Doorstep.aspx

Hear the Bluetree song inspired by the plight of these little girls at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqQhZKpZVCo