Eyes

I realize that the eyes that I view Las Vegas with are probably different than most. When I walk through the casinos now, I see the girls working and I wonder what their lives are like. I wonder if they are out on their own volition or if they are one of the women and children forced into modern slavery. I work events for the trade shows that come to town with a pit in my stomach knowing that many of the men in the room will buy a young girl when the business day is done. I see cab drivers and valets and I wonder if they are the ones taking a cut off the backs of girls forced into prostitution. When I drive down the 15, I look at all the casino lights and I wonder how many girls at that moment are in those hotel rooms living a life they never wanted or imagined. I wonder how many of them there are.

Every night driving home from work, I look at the panoramic view of the city outside my window and I ask myself: how do I make people care? How do I unite, educate and mobilize a group of citizens to action? How do we stop sex trafficking in Las Vegas?

Somaly

Somaly Mam embodies the word survivor. As a Cambodian girl, she lived through the years of civil war and genocide at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. She became a slave to an older man that raped and abused her for several years and sold her to a brothel at the age of 12. For years, she was brutally raped and tortured daily by the johns and the brothel owners. She was forced to watch her best friend being murdered. Thousands of Cambodian girls know this life.

What makes Somaly different is that she escaped. What makes Somaly beautiful is that she has pledged her life to rescuing and rehabilitating these girls. Girls just like her. She began AFESIP-Action For Women In Distressing Situations (name was first in French) and has rescued over 4,000 girls-girls as young as three years old. Her life and family are constantly threatened for the work she does, but she marches on. Her own 14 year-old daughter was kidnapped, tortured and raped by the traffickers she works to fight.

In the last 10 years she has been recognized internationally for her efforts and in 2007 started the Somaly Mam Foundation stateside to help fund her efforts. She gives these girls a chance for life again. Healing from this type of abuse is a long road but Somaly gives them food, shelter, love, acceptance, understanding and education to move on.

I hope to meet her one day so I can give her a hug and tell her how beautiful I think she is.
I read her moving memoir a few years ago, so it is available for loan from me or you can order it here.

Here are Somaly and her girls. Listen to their stories. They deserve to be heard.