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Somaly Mam was born in either 1970 or 1971 in Cambodia. Nobody knows for certain, since there are no records of her birth. She and her family lived in extreme poverty. When she was 12 years old, her parents abandoned her. She survived alone until a man she had never met before found her. He promised her he’d find her family if she went with him, so she did. He took her in and she became his slave. He instructed her to call him “grandfather”.
He regularly abused her until the age of 14, when he sold her off to a man who she then was forced to marry. He would beat and rape her, and sometimes even fire a gun at her. One day, at 15 years old, she finally fought back – she took his gun and shot him in the foot. He then sold her to a brothel. There, she was forced to work as a prostitute.
She had to have sex with 5 to 6 clients every day. When she refused, she was taken into a cellar with snakes and scorpions, where she was then tortured and raped. She was also forced to go out onto the street and sell her body there. She witnessed her best friend there get shot for trying to escape. But throughout all this, she remained strong and was determined to escape someday.
In 1993, an aid worker from France helped her escape the brothel and travel to Paris. There she worked as a midwife and got married. While living in Paris, she found out that many other girls were in a situation similar to her own. Compelled to help and make a difference, she returned to Cambodia in 1996. Pretending to have been sent there officially by the french government, she handed out condoms to women working in brothels. That same year, she founded AFESIP, a nonprofit organization that rescues, houses and rehabilitates women and children who have been forced into sexual slavery. The organization has sanctuaries in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and works with the police to free women forced into sexual slavery.
In september 2007, she launched the Somaly Mam foundation, which supports anti-trafficking groups and helps women who have been in sexual slavery find regular work. Her organizations have helped over 4000 women who were forced into prostitution. Somaly visits all of the girls she has rescued regularly. She comforts them and assures them things will get better.
Her job is difficult and often dangerous. She once had a pimp threaten her with a gun, but she remained unfazed and talked him out of hurting her. She frequently gets death threats and so do her relatives. Living with the memories of her tragic past is not easy, either. She has even tried to commit suicide a few times and suffers from anger management issues. Sometimes, memories of the past keep her awake at night, so she can barely get any sleep and has to resort to taking sleeping pills. But still, she keeps going. The joy she sees on the faces of the girls that she saved makes it all worth it.
-Readsomewhere
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