Others are trafficked from the region or from the poorer neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. These are young girls who may not be getting an education, who work in the fields, and then are told false stories of empty dreams. They and their parents might sign contracts for the girls to go work as waitresses or domestic workers in the city, and then the girls spend years trying to flee their plight as indentured slaves in the sex trade. Those who do escape may eventually get caught and charged with a crime.
This was true of one case study involving nineteen-year-old, Pheap, from Cambodia, who explains her story on The Asia Foundation’s counter-trafficking multilingual Web site, TIPinAsia (Anti Trafficking In Persons in Asia).
“Two months later, the owner of [a] food shop tried to force me to wear a short skirt and work late at night. I didn’t agree to wear a short skirt. But after one week of torture from the owner of [the] food shop, being raped by a gang, and deceived to lose my virginity, I decide to agree to what the owner said and entertain customers. I felt I could not return home anymore and I was in despair. One year later, I and my three Laotian friends escaped from the food shop and filed a complaint against the owner at the police station. In the end, I was detained for three months on charges of illegal migration.”
According to the WHO, forced sexual intercourse and other forms of violence involving touch among boys and girls under the age of eighteen, is 73 million (7 percent) and 150 million (14 percent) worldwide. Since 2003, thousands of people have contributed to a United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children through the use of questionnaires and other research methods in consultations and working groups. In October of 2006, the UN General Assembly was beginning to take in the study’s recommendations.
Another night in Bangkok, I was invited by an English-teaching colleague to a go-go bar dance contest. He had spawned from Los Angeles, had married a Thai woman, and wanted to include me in something other than karaoke or a trip to the islands for the weekend. With two guy friends visiting from San Francisco who I knew would get a kick out of the invitation, I accepted. My English-teaching friend warned me that there would be plenty of drool along with cigars from the Western men in the audience, while the girls would be in their skimpy bikinis on the stage.
