Prostitution In Cambodia

                                                  

by Robert Szabo

According to the US State Department 600,000 to 800,000 women, and children are forced into prostitution a year. Mostly children from the age of 8-16 are sold into brothels as prostitutes. Cambodia a country where prostitution is taking place even today, has hundreds of women and children being forced into prostitution a year. About 90 percent of the woman in Cambodia are considered to be prostitutes.

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Woman and children sold into brothels in Cambodia are beaten or even killed if they do not follow even the smallest thing they are told to do. Imagine seeing a child who was sexually abused by a family member, or by someone they have never met before without a choice because otherwise they would be tortured or killed. Prostitution in Cambodia and even around the world are hardly even spoke about on the news, and it should be our job to gain awareness of such a serious problem that is happening every single day.

“It's still happening, today, tonight. Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book. My story doesn't matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don't sleep at night. They haunt me.”(61) (The Road Of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam) this quote was made by Somaly Mam a woman who was sold into a brothel by her grandfather at the age of twelve. As she got older she began moving throughout different brothels in Southeast Asia, also being beaten multiple times to the point where mentally she was scarred forever. For 10 years of being beaten and countless amount of days without sleep and constantly thinking how there are more women and children that are going through the same thing she is, she finally was able to stand up for herself and escape from her brothel and start an organization to help other women and children going through what she has called AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations). Her organization has won multiple awards since then.

What is so shocking is how in such a developed world every day people are willing to sell their own family members as sex slaves for money, and the entire world has done almost nothing to stop it. But there is something that we can all do and that is to raise awareness on this situation that is happening everyday, so people can understand what is going on in the outside world that the news does not tell us about.