Nic Lumpp, left, and Jared Greenberg listen to Somaly Mam of Cambodia on Friday. The two head a U.S. effort to fund her fight against the sex-slave trade. (John Prieto, The Denver Post )By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post
04/05/2008
Working as a teenage 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 — a warning to other girls to obey. Mam said she then began trying to help a newcomer, a girl with dark skin like hers, eventually using 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.
Now Mam and two former U.S. Air Force Academy cadets, Nic Lumpp and Jared Greenberg, are launching a private U.S. effort to fight the multi billion-dollar sex trade that governments and police have been unable to kill.
Based in Denver, the Somaly Mam Foundation (somaly.org) has raised $400,000 and aims to collect $1 million by July, thanks to corporate and celebrity backers such as actress Susan Sarandon.
"We need the United States. Americans are more active," Mam said. Cambodia's own efforts to combat the sex trade have been crippled by corruption of police and courts.
A preview of the film "Holly" tonight at Denver's Starz Film Center, continuing through next week, is designed to help publicize the effort. A fundraiser has been set for next week in New York. And Mam's published account of her slavery, "The Road of Lost Innocence," is scheduled for release this fall.
After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 2005, Lumpp and Greenberg resolved to do something about the global sex trade.
"It outraged us," said Lumpp, 25. "We couldn't just stand by and talk about it. It's a blatant disregard for human life."
Greenberg now works as a management consultant in Los Angeles, and Lumpp runs a Denver-based Web business that helps parents teach children financial skills.
They discovered Mam's work and sent her e-mails. She received those with great skepticism, she said, and told the Americans to come to Cambodia if they wanted to help. They visited for 10 days last year. Mam said she still doubted them, suspecting they were sex tourists or pedophiles.
Meeting them at the airport, "I looked at them thinking: They are young. If they have commitment, that's good. I don't think they are pedophiles."
She brought them to one of her 60-person shelters and watched them carefully as they met recently rescued girls. "I wanted to see their attitude," Mam said.
Lumpp and Greenberg played games. They worked with interpreters to ask the girls and young women questions. Lumpp said they noticed those in Mam's shelters aspired to become educated, whereas those in brothels seemed listless.
Mam said she saw the two crying. "I said to myself: 'We can trust them.' "
"My staff said: You trust them? I said: Yes. They said: Why? I said: I just do. Normally I never trust men."
The foundation's approach is twofold: Campaign to stop foreign sex tourists and others from entering Southeast Asia in the first place, and fund continued rescues and rehab for girls and young women at shelters in Cambodia and neighboring countries.
Today sex-trade owners seek younger girls, as young as 4, said Mam, who was sold from her village into slavery around age 12 after a "grandfather" used her as a household servant.
U.S. diplomats have visited the 60-person shelters, where girls receive counseling, medical care, basic education and training on sewing machines. U.S. officials quietly offered her protection, Mam said. But leaving Cambodia is out of the question. "My heart is with these girls," she said.
The Denver Post
04/05/2008
Working as a teenage 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 — a warning to other girls to obey. Mam said she then began trying to help a newcomer, a girl with dark skin like hers, eventually using 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.
Now Mam and two former U.S. Air Force Academy cadets, Nic Lumpp and Jared Greenberg, are launching a private U.S. effort to fight the multi billion-dollar sex trade that governments and police have been unable to kill.
Based in Denver, the Somaly Mam Foundation (somaly.org) has raised $400,000 and aims to collect $1 million by July, thanks to corporate and celebrity backers such as actress Susan Sarandon.
"We need the United States. Americans are more active," Mam said. Cambodia's own efforts to combat the sex trade have been crippled by corruption of police and courts.
A preview of the film "Holly" tonight at Denver's Starz Film Center, continuing through next week, is designed to help publicize the effort. A fundraiser has been set for next week in New York. And Mam's published account of her slavery, "The Road of Lost Innocence," is scheduled for release this fall.
After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 2005, Lumpp and Greenberg resolved to do something about the global sex trade.
"It outraged us," said Lumpp, 25. "We couldn't just stand by and talk about it. It's a blatant disregard for human life."
Greenberg now works as a management consultant in Los Angeles, and Lumpp runs a Denver-based Web business that helps parents teach children financial skills.
They discovered Mam's work and sent her e-mails. She received those with great skepticism, she said, and told the Americans to come to Cambodia if they wanted to help. They visited for 10 days last year. Mam said she still doubted them, suspecting they were sex tourists or pedophiles.
Meeting them at the airport, "I looked at them thinking: They are young. If they have commitment, that's good. I don't think they are pedophiles."
She brought them to one of her 60-person shelters and watched them carefully as they met recently rescued girls. "I wanted to see their attitude," Mam said.
Lumpp and Greenberg played games. They worked with interpreters to ask the girls and young women questions. Lumpp said they noticed those in Mam's shelters aspired to become educated, whereas those in brothels seemed listless.
Mam said she saw the two crying. "I said to myself: 'We can trust them.' "
"My staff said: You trust them? I said: Yes. They said: Why? I said: I just do. Normally I never trust men."
The foundation's approach is twofold: Campaign to stop foreign sex tourists and others from entering Southeast Asia in the first place, and fund continued rescues and rehab for girls and young women at shelters in Cambodia and neighboring countries.
Today sex-trade owners seek younger girls, as young as 4, said Mam, who was sold from her village into slavery around age 12 after a "grandfather" used her as a household servant.
U.S. diplomats have visited the 60-person shelters, where girls receive counseling, medical care, basic education and training on sewing machines. U.S. officials quietly offered her protection, Mam said. But leaving Cambodia is out of the question. "My heart is with these girls," she said.
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