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.