” How does the Somaly Mam Foundation help other sex slaves?
It can take five minutes to raid a brothel but years for the rescued girls to recover. Some want to commit suicide. I show them that they can survive, they can have dignity. We have three shelters— two for vocational training, another for young children. We let them stay long-term. We help them find jobs. We are a family.”

You can read the full feature online:

Fighting to End Slavery – Parade.com

http://www.dw-world.com/dw/article/0,,4269861,00.html

“The fact that she escaped makes her unique, but what makes her truly extraordinary is that she went back. While, understandably, most people would spend the rest of their lives quietly recovering from their wounds, Mam decided to confront the system that continues to victimize Cambodian girls.”

You can read the rest of Jolie’s thoughts on Somaly, as well as check out the entire Time 100 list, here.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/01/03/opinion/1194837193498/the-face-of-slavery.html

“New York Times columnist Nick Kristof is calling for a new abolition movement: the abolition of 21st-century slavery — by which he means sex slavery.

The global sex trafficking of young girls, in numbers greater than the 19th-century Atlantic slave trade ever knew. Girls kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, maimed and degraded, every hour of every day.

George W. Bush has made a good start on attacking the problem, Kristof says. Barack Obama, he says, should finish it.

This hour, On Point: Sex trafficking, a new century’s slaves, and a new push for abolition.”

You can listen to the full show here: 21st Century Slavery

“After being freed, Sina began studying and eventually became one of Somaly’s trusted lieutenants. They now work together, in defiance of death threats from brothel owners, to free other girls. To get at Somaly, the brothel owners kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter. And six months ago, the daughter of another anti-trafficking activist (my interpreter when I interviewed Sina) went missing.”

Check out the full article on the New York Times. Also, you can help the story reach others by voting it up on Reddit, a social news site, here. It’s already made the front page with over 670 votes, as of the time of this writing!

View the video here

“Abandoned as a child in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s murderous reign, Somaly Mam has no memory of her family and doesn’t know her true age or name. But she recalls when she was sold to a brothel.She traces a dramatic and haunting journey from sex slave to crusader against forced prostitution in her newly released memoir, “The Road of Lost Innocence,” which reads like a Dickensian tale of triumph over adversity.

Remarkably, she does not see her path from a remote mountain region of Cambodia to an international campaigner as awe-inspiring.

“I never feel that way, I’m still Somaly. I used to work in the fields and now I help victims,” she told Reuters in an interview.”

Read the full article here.

“Along the way, somehow she learned not to be silent. That is the most extraordinary part of her shocking life’s journey, an achievement she still cannot fully explain. Her hard-earned ability to speak out has helped her rescue 4,000 girls and women from brothels in the last decade. It has helped her build one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia, with 150 employees, sheltering 220 women and girls in that country, with more in shelters in Vietnam and Laos. And earlier this month it brought her to Capitol Hill to urge members of Congress to pass a law against human trafficking.

“What can we do to help you?” asked Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), receiving Mam in her office.

“Your pressure can help,” Mam replied, saying that the United States can be an example to Cambodia and other countries where trafficking is rampant.”

You can read the full article here.

“World leaders are parading through New York this week for a United Nations General Assembly reviewing their (lack of) progress in fighting global poverty. That’s urgent and necessary, but what they aren’t talking enough about is one of the grimmest of all manifestations of poverty — sex trafficking.

This is widely acknowledged to be the 21st-century version of slavery, but governments accept it partly because it seems to defy solution. Prostitution is said to be the oldest profession. It exists in all countries, and if some teenage girls are imprisoned in brothels until they die of AIDS, that is seen as tragic but inevitable. “

Read the full article here.