Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Former sex slave urges Australia to help

http://news.smh.com.au/

via Khmer NZ

PAUL MULVEY
July 27, 2010

AAP

Her mother sold her for $300.

But Chan Sineth is one of the few fortunate ones to escape the child sex slavery that 1.8 million children are sold into across the world each year.

Australian sex offenders are contributing to the growth of the trade and Neth (Neth) is in Australia to implore the government to do more to help stop more girls being enslaved like her.

"I want to appeal to the Australian government to help the poor children, especially the girls in Cambodia. The problem of trafficking of girls in Cambodia is getting increased," Neth told AAP.

Neth was sold by her mother when she was 14, spending a horrific year as a sex slave in Cambodia before being rescued in 2004 by American journalist Nicholas Kristof who bought her from her pimp for $150.

After graduating from a transition centre where she lived with 15 other former sex slaves, she set up a store which her family looted and is now successfully studying beauty therapy, anatomy and English and teaches yoga to disadvantaged children.

She is also determined to raise awareness of sex trafficking and help other girls who come from families like Neth's.

"I think there is no other option because of the poverty, so they have to sell their children for money like my own family," she said.

Neth has joined Australian child protection charity Childwise to launch its campaign in Melbourne on Tuesday to have Australians sign a petition to stop the sex slave trade.

It's not just about tackling poverty in countries like Cambodia where many families find their daughter's virginity is their best source of income.

And it's not just a foreign problem, says Childwise chief executive Bernadette McMenamin. Australian sex offenders feed the slave traders, making up 31 per cent of sex tourists prosecuted in Thailand.

The federal government and police don't do enough about it, Ms McMenamin says.

"There is this apathy in Australia and many Western countries that there is this inevitability," Ms McMenamin said.

"But we know there are a multitude of programs that need to be in place to keep children in school, to support families and provide families with alternatives to the sale of children.

"It can be done if the government turns their minds to this and works together and says `this is as important as global warming'.

"It's not just about poverty, it's about all the other factors combined, it's about organised crime, it's about sex tourism and we are one of, if not the biggest, offender in South-East Asia.

"The government do not take it seriously, we are demanding they take it seriously."

Ms McMenamin wants the federal government to increase its current level of aid 10-fold to help establish support programs and education in villages in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos.

She also wants the Australian Federal Police to be more proactive, for sex offenders to be reported when they travel overseas and to be brought back to Australia for prosecution.

Childwise is supported by a Monash University survey of 18,000 Australians in which 73 per cent of respondents said they wanted the government to do more to fight the crime.

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