Photographed
By Brigitte Lacombe at Mam’s Siem Reap Center, in Cambodia, on December 6, 2011.
The Story
In
a flower-filled compound half an hour from Cambodia’s Angkor Wat,
several dozen women and girls are gathered around Susan Sarandon and
Somaly Mam, telling their tearful stories. One woman was raped, then
sold to a brothel, where she toiled for 12 years until she was freed in a
raid orchestrated by Mam. “Do you know you are safe now?” Sarandon
asks, stroking the woman’s hair. This is one of three rehab centers
established by Mam, a former sex slave herself, who moved to France but
returned to Cambodia to help other girls facing the hardship she
endured. The girls learn to read and to make dresses—skills they can use
after high school. Sarandon is here to see the projects and film
fund-raising pitches for the Somaly Mam Foundation. After the impromptu
therapy session, Mam gives a raucous pep talk interspersed with teasing.
“What do we say?” she asks. “Persevere!” the girls shout. “We are
laughing and crying together all the time,” says Mam. “But my girls are
learning to be strong.”
Sex trafficking is a global scourge,
but in Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest countries, crippled by years of
brutality at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, families sometimes see no
choice but to sell their daughters (Mam was sold to a brothel when she
was 12). Until recently, the government ignored the problem, but Mam
has persuaded officials to campaign against trafficking.
Sarandon is a fund-raising powerhouse (she also supports Heifer
International), landing a donation for a new dorm for the girls. “I have
always been involved in causes, but when I became famous, there were
suddenly 20 microphones in my face,” she says. “I realized there was
power in that.”
Mam’s Big Trip
“My
first trip to France in 1993—it opened my eyes to the possibility of a
new reality. When I returned to Cambodia, I began to take action in
fixing the wrongs I had seen all my life.”
Give
Donate at somaly.org.
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