Somaly Mam's resignation from the Somaly Mam Foundation and why it matters

Somaly Mam recently resigned from the Somaly Mam Foundation, a non-profit that rehabilitates girls and women in Cambodia who have escaped from human trafficking, following affirmations that her personal experiences being trafficked, her memoir, and the stories of many young women who claim to have been rescued from human trafficking by her foundation were fabricated.

Many responses I have seen have been in support of Mam and her work. "I don't care what she's done in the past and I don't care that she lied, she's doing good work now and that's all that matters."

Most people fail to realize when fabrications about experiences like this are discovered, they cast doubt on all other survivors who are trying to tell their stories. These lies lead people to believe even more that survivors sharing their trauma are doing it for attention, publicity, or profit. The inflated number of false accusations in sex crimes is a pervasive myth that is thrown at all survivors who come forward, and stories like this only further that myth.

I have not seen any statements from Somaly Mam apologizing to the young women she pressured into lying for the sake of pulling in donations for her foundation. She should apologize to them and to survivors who are currently attempting to recover and overcome stigma in order to share their truths despite being surrounded by a culture of doubt that will attempt to silence and shame them.

What she did was absolutely not okay. Her significant accomplishments in rescuing and rehabilitating survivors of sex trafficking should not be used to excuse her actions. Her foundation, Half the Sky, and other projects she has had a part in will be tainted by this lie. We were fooled, but her actions should not be disregarded or defended.

Blogging for the Girl Effect: Human Trafficking

The number of slaves in the world today is far greater than ever before in history.

- E. Benjamin Skinner, A Crime so Monstrous

There are more individuals in slavery today than at the height of the trans-atlantic slave trade.

- The Polaris Project

Human trafficking is a very different field than consensual sex work. Trafficking is modern-day slavery. It is an issue that affects both men and women and all victims are important and deserve to be recognized. Girls and women are trafficked at much higher rates than boys, though. Many girls who are trafficked are as young as six years old.

Victims in the sex trafficking industry are raped daily, receive little or no medical care, are subjected to botched, late-term abortions, receive no schooling, little food, are brutally beaten by their pimps and often die from such beatings, as well as from untreated sexually transmitted infections.

TRAFFIK by Norman Jean Roy

How to girls end up in these situations? In developing countries, contraception is either illegal or not made easily available. Poor families may have a large number of children, sometimes more than they are able to provide for. In the cycle of poverty girls always lose. They are sometimes sold into slavery by their families. In other instances families might be tricked by traffickers into thinking their daughters will be taken to the city to work or receive an education, only for them to later be forced into prostitution by their captors after they are taken from their homes.

If girls are able to escape from their brothels and return home they are often shunned or stigmatized by their villages and often even by their own family.

Human trafficking is the second largest industry in the world, pulling in about $32 billion annually.

Two children are sold every minute.

Human trafficking does not just affect developing countries. The countries with the highest recorded amounts of human trafficking are include: Belarus, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, China, Thailand, and Nigeria.

Human trafficking is also a large problem in the United States. Over 100,000 children in the United States alone are forced into prostitution or pornography each year. Trafficking tends to increase around areas hosting large events, such as the Super Bowl or the Olympics.

The average age of entry into human trafficking and pornography in the United States is twelve years old.

Women like Anuradha Koirala, CNN's 2010 Hero of the Year and the founder and executive director of Maiti Nepal, are working to combat human trafficking and to provide a reliable means of recovery for its victims.

Since 1993, Koirala's work with Maiti Nepal has led to the rescue of more than 12,000 Nepali women and girls.

Somaly Mam, CNN's 2006 Hero of the Year, president of AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations) and president of the Somaly Mam Foundation, is another women who rescues trafficked girls and helps pave a road to recovery for victims of the sex trade industry.

Mam was once a victim of sexual slavery herself. She shares her personal story into and out of the brothels in her book The Road of Lost Innocence.

The Girl Effect is an organization that strives to empower women by keeping girls in school, which will lead to them to marry when they choose, stay healthy and HIV negative, raise a healthy family, and to be able to provide for themselves, raise the standard of living for their villages, and empower other young girls around them.

By valuing, educating and empowering girls, human trafficking can be cut by a wide margin.


For more information about human trafficking, check out Love146.org, a religiously based organization that strives to educate people about human trafficking and combat its causes. Its website provides shocking personal stories from trafficking victims themselves and from people who have gone into brothels to recover these victims.

Read its online zine here.

If you would like to make a donation to an organization that is combating human trafficking and its causes (and I urge you to donate to a charity that is completely secular, these girls need food, shelter, and medical attention, not bibles and preachers), I highly recommend Maiti Nepal as well as The Somaly Mam Foundation, and of course, The Girl Effect.