Running for Their Lives

Remember this? “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.”

Viva posted that back in May. But long before that my heart was broken by the hundreds of thousands of girls in Cambodia who are in this exact situation. I don’t even want to imagine it. But child sexual exploitation in Cambodia is something the world can’t avoid imagining. We need to be confronted with it, address it, end it, and then help to heal the girls who have gone through it.

Saved from Slavery... by a Sandwich Cart

Veata’s family live in a village outside Phnom Penh. She’s 15 now, but she’s been working since she was 11. Veata, her mother, and her siblings work as trash collectors to earn money – three siblings work collecting trash while the other three attend school, and then they swap. Veata’s father is a construction worker.

A few years ago, Veata’s mother enrolled her in the Phnom Penh network’s ‘Get Ready’ programme, a project that keeps girls out of brothels by helping them develop skills that will help them get work. That way girls are educated but are still available to help their families earn money –a balance that is really necessary in poor Cambodian villages and families. (For those of you who don’t know, the network in Phnom Penh, called Chab Dai, is a group of projects that Viva helped bring together and continues to support, to prevent girls from being sold into sexual slavery in Cambodia.)

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?