“Nicholas D. Kristof interviews Somaly Mam, who was sold to the brothels as a young teenager and now runs shelters for rescued girls.”

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.

A recently published article in the Washington post discusses Somaly Mam’s efforts to lobby Congress for  stricter human trafficking laws, and recounts her harrowing childhood spent in a brothel:

“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.

A new op-ed in the New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristoff discusses Somaly Mam’s fight against human trafficking, her new book, and recounts her inspiring story:

“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.

Somaly Mam foundation founders Nicholas Lumpp and Jared Greenberg were recently featured by Marie Claire:

“Some guys play Xbox and fantasy football in their spare time; Jared Greenberg and Nicholas Lumpp save young women from sexual slavery in Southeast Asia. The 25-year-old Air Force Academy graduates are the founders of the Somaly Mam Foundation, a new nonprofit group named after a woman who escaped the brothels of Cambodia and now rescues enslaved girls. (Her remarkable memoir, The Road of Lost Innocence, hits bookstores this month.) We asked Greenberg, who works as a consultant by day, and Lumpp, who runs a personal-finance website, about their heroic side job.”

Read the full interview here.

Somaly mam was recently featured on MSNBC’s Hansen Files:

Check out more Somaly Mam Videos on our Video page.

Somaly Mam was featured today in the Denver post, in an article entitled Anti-sex slavery activist in Denver tonight.

“Working as a teen-aged sex slave in a Cambodian brothel, Somaly Mam says she served up to 30 clients a night. Some hit her. “I never thought, just lived hour by hour. I played with nothing. In my head: nothing. It was dark, dark, dark. I never trusted people,” Mam said Friday during a visit to Denver.

“I was dead.”

She tried suicide, she said.

Her turning point: the day a brothel pimp fired a bullet through the head of her friend, Srymom, who dared refuse customers - warning other girls to obey. Mam said she then began trying to help a newcomer, a girl with dark skin like her, and eventually used the brothel keys to set her free.

Brothel owners soon released Mam, deeming her too old for Cambodia’s booming sex trade.

Ever since, Mam has been arranging rescues of child sex slaves - more than 4,000 over the past decade. The group she formed - Acting for Women in Distressing Situations - counsels and rehabilitates them at shelters in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

Read the full article here.

Somaly Mam’s continued effort to battle sexual slavery was recently honoured by the World Children’s Prize, decided by a vote of over 6 million children worlwide. From an article in the International Herald Tribune:

“A Cambodian activist who has worked to rescue girls from sexual slavery was named the winner Wednesday of the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child.

The Swedish prize committee said Somaly Mam was honored for her “dangerous struggle” to save girls sold to brothels in Cambodia. She was selected the winner in a vote by 6.6 million children worldwide.

Mam was herself sold as a sex slave when she was a child and in 2006 her 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped, raped and sold to a brothel, the citation said.

She is now the president of AFESIP, the French acronym for Acting for Women in Distressing Situations, which has helped build safe houses that provide refuge, food, health care and schooling for girls saved from slavery.”

Read the full article here.

Somaly Mam Foundation founders Jared and Nicholas were recently featured on a Fox 21 report. Entitled “AFA Grads Battle Sex Slavery”, the report follows Nicholas and Jared as they talk to Air Force Academy cadets about their mission to stop sex slavery. Watch the video after the jump:
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