A NEW BEGINNING

Some people may be driven by a painful memory, a haunting fear or an unconscious belief. There are hundreds of circumstances, values and emotions that can drive lives. Fifteen-year-old Mao* has been driven by a painful memory since she was young. 

"My family is extremely poor," Mao explains. "When I was younger, my family did not have shelter to live in and we were staying in a temporary place without walls. It was built for people who were traveling as a place of rest. After this, my family moved and lived on other people's land but we needed to pay $200 USD per year. My mother owed money to many microfinance institutions. Their staff came to ask for repayments. When we said that we did not have cash for repayment, they threatened to take down the zinc roof on our house."

Mao elaborates on her experience of living in poverty and recalls with sadness, "I have six brothers and sisters. I am the fourth child of the family. My mother sells fruit such as bananas, mangos and  she sells flowers. Meanwhile, my father is an assistant chef. Both of them earn a small amount of money and it is just enough for food and other expenses for the family. Since I was small, we have never had our own house, nor land."

Unlike other children, Mao didn’t go to school for long. She dropped out in second grade because of her family's poverty. Moreover, family debt pressured Mao into the sexual trade in order for her to earn money to pay for what her family owed.

Mao shares her story, "One day, I went to visit a friend and stayed overnight in her house. My friend's mother asked women and girls staying in her house if anybody wanted to sell Pomme (a Cambodian reference to virginity)."

Hearing this offer, Mao was driven to consider this question. After thinking about her family and their financial state for a while, she answered to her friend's mother, "Yes, I will." 

At dawn the next day, two women waited for Mao in front of a pagoda on the outskirts of the capital city of Phnom Penh. The woman instructed Mao to mask her face so no one would recognize her. Ashamed, she did as they told her. Together with the women, she traveled to Cambodia's Battambang town to a hotel where her virginity was sold to a man for $200 USD. Mao immediately sent $150 US dollars to her mother to pay debt, but did not let her mother know where the money had come from. 

Mao blames herself, "I should not have been so naïve and ignorant to trade myself." 

While there are no official statistics on the number of people working as prostitutes in Cambodia, according to 2010 Human Rights Watch report, an estimated 20,000 people work in the Cambodian sex industry. 

Poverty, like the kind Mao’s family experiences, is common. According to the Cambodian Millennium Development Goals report of 2010, 27.4 per cent of Cambodians lived in poverty in 2010. The resulting average national poverty line for 2007 was US$ 0.61 per capita per day. Poverty may lead children to get involved in economic activity. An estimated 45 per cent of five to 14-year-olds, were economically active in the 2001 reference year. 

For Mao, poverty pushed her to do it again and again. Just several days later, she accepted another offer, yet still in pain and bleeding from the first incident. That time, the man did not touch her and left her with $30 USD. Knowing the ongoing financial difficulty of her family, and her parents’ inability to repay their debts, Mao continued to turn to the sex trade for money. 

Mao's final client happened to be a foreigner, a man who was being investigated and tracked by the Cambodian department of Anti-human Trafficking and Minor Protection and another organisation. 

This investigation led to Mao's rescue from the perpetrator. Following her rescue, Mao was sent to World Vision's Trauma Recovery Center for medical care to treat her physical injuries as well as for psychosocial support.

Mao has spent several months in the Trauma Recovery Center where she has had the opportunity for counselling, and practical training in topics such as health issues, life skills and language study. In the centre, Mao has learned that she loves to weave. She is now able to weave traditional Cambodian Kramas and is able to earn money from this skill. 

Like a girl driven by guilt, Mao spent much of her childhood running from regrets and hiding her shame. While guilt-driven people are often manipulated by memories, Mao, however, has decided that she won't allow her past to control her future. 

Thinking about two of her friends, who were also traded to a foreigner by their parents, Mao pleads to all parents, "Please do not trade your children."

Mao pleads to all parents, "Please do not trade your children."

Mao's hope is that her friends and other girls like her would not fall in to the trap of sexual exploitation due to poverty, "I will share my difficult experience to friends who are living in poverty like me, and I will convince them not to trade themselves because if they fall into sexual slavery, they will be hurt and regretful for life."

Mao dreams of becoming a teacher. She says, "I want to be a Khmer teacher, so I can read and teach other people to read."

*Names have been changed to protect identities.