Invisible Chains Read Online Free PDF Page A

together to eradicate them.

2
    TRAVELLING SEX OFFENDERS FUELLING DEMAND ABROAD
    H uman trafficking in far-off lands may seem removed from the lives of average Canadians. Victims like Srey Mao, however, know all too well that travelling sex offenders from numerous countries, including Canada, have contributed to the demand that has enslaved them.
    Srey Mao grew up in Kampong Cham province in central Cambodia, where, as far as we can tell, she enjoyed life in a remote village. It all changed when Srey Mao’s mother sold her to a brothel owner in the bustling national capital of Phnom Penh when she was seventeen.
    Once the money had changed hands, Srey Mao was taken directly to a hotel room where a foreign “child sex tourist” raped and beat her while another man, likely paid by her owner, guarded the door.
    From that day, Srey Mao’s life became a chain of sexual abuse by countless men who rented her body from her mama-san. After several months, Srey Mao finally managed to escape and, in search of comfort and safety, travelled from Phnom Penh to the home of an aunt. There she encountered rejection, not just from her aunt but from the entire village, which stigmatized her as a prostitute. No one in the village allowed her to stay with them, nor would they feed her. In desperation, hoping her aunt would acknowledge that she wasn’t responsible for her fate, Srey Mao slept beneath the window of heraunt’s bedroom. Her aunt was unyielding: Srey Mao was labelled a prostitute and deserved no love or support.
    It was Srey Mao’s mother who found her—and only because she was on her way to Phnom Penh to sell Sarun, Srey Mao’s younger sister, to the same mama-san who’d purchased Srey Mao. When her mother ignored Srey Mao’s pleas not to condemn Sarun to the same hell, Srey Mao offered to take her little sister’s place. Her mother agreed, and Srey Mao was sold back to the brothels to save her sister.
    Srey Mao’s love for her little sister was more powerful than the evil that had ravaged her. Although she’d been shunned and treated worse than an animal, her spirit hadn’t been crushed.
    Within three hours of agreeing to take her sister’s place, Srey Mao had been re-sold and was again forced to accept a steady stream of men, at least fifteen, each night. As before, she attempted to escape. This time, however, she was caught and severely beaten before being forced back into the role her “owners” had paid for her to perform.
    For six months, hundreds of local men and foreign tourists raped and sexually abused her. In a courageous moment, Srey Mao attempted another escape, this one successful, and made her way through the countryside of Kampong Cham, hoping this time her family would take her in. Again she was rejected. With no one to turn to, Srey Mao returned to Phnom Penh where, hopeless in the face of people, power, and a system she couldn’t escape, she attempted suicide by ingesting a mixture of drugs and collapsed unconscious in the street.
    Srey Mao awoke in a hospital bed. Someone—a modern-day Good Samaritan—had found her and brought her there. The man hadn’t left his name, but without a doubt he’d saved her life.
    After hearing the story, doctors at the hospital pooled their money and gave it to Srey Mao, then helped her obtain a bed at a recovery centre for rescued victims of sex trafficking. It was a safe place, away from the mama-sans and other traffickers, landscaped with flowers and trees, and staffed by people who rejected the idea that anyone who’d been treated like Srey Mao should be stigmatized for life. Sheshared the centre with other girls and young women who’d been sold into sexual slavery to meet the demand from tourists, expatriates, and businessmen from Western countries, as well as local men looking for young bodies to purchase.
    When I met Srey Mao at the recovery centre, she was nineteen years old and