http://www.news10.net/
via CAAI News Media
Kris Vera-Phillips
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - Happy New Year from Phnom Penh!!! We landed in Cambodia's capitol city early Monday morning local time. Don and Bridgette Brewster, the founders of Agape International Mission, picked us up from the airport, giving us the opportunity to finally hear first hand the full scope and scale of trafficking in Cambodia.
We landed in Cambodia's capitol city early Monday morning local time. Don and Bridgette Brewster, the founders of Agape International Mission, picked us up from the airport, giving us the opportunity to finally hear first hand the full scope and scale of trafficking in Cambodia.
Four years in Cambodia's dangerous red light district has meant a lot of things for Don and Bridgette. They are well acquainted with the very best, and the very worst of society. Today, they have 58 girls in various stages of their reintegration program, not including those already reintegrated with their families, or into a profession of their choosing. However, these joys are in stark contrast to the young children they see trafficked every day, witnessing an individual bludgeoned to death with a golf club on their street, or rushing a young girl to the ER after a particularly violent rape. She suffered from severe internal bleeding, as her young, pre-pubescent body was not meant to be manhandled. Literally.
As excited as I am to be in Cambodia, I am bracing myself for the horrors we will witness tomorrow when we will actually be in Svay Pak for the first time. Bridgette asked that we not photograph the children without their permission. Many of them have been forced to perform lewd, sexual acts on film, and the camera is only one more reminder of their dark reality. Even though they are children by day, they are sex slaves by night. The majority of the children who join in the Arts and Crafts
Tomorrow, we will meet these brave girls for the first time. We have 30 aerosol cans and 10 gallons of paint to begin our project of turning the whitewashed walls of the Kids' Club into a kids' dreamhouse.
Blog by Rachel Fuerst, heART for the KidS team
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