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The Road of Lost Innocence, The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine by Somaly Mam is yet another one that I think everybody should read!  It’s as simple as that:  read this book.  It’s heartbreaking, powerful, disturbing, and straightforward.  It’s also an amazing account of how one person can rise above their circumstances and lift others up in the process.

Somaly Mam, born in a small village in Cambodia, is orphaned at a young age.  She doesn’t even know her real name or her birthday and most of her memories consist of scavenging for her food and finding a place to sleep at night.  No one really takes her in.  Somaly’s childhood coincides with the Khmer Rouge regime but her village was so remote that she has no recollection of soldiers, but later learns that many of her troubles in the future can be blamed on the political upheaval of Cambodia.

At the age of nine or ten, Taman, one of the men in the village sold Somaly to  her “grandfather” as an indentured servant.  For the next few years, Somaly is abused, beaten, starved, and let’s not forget to mention the back breaking work that she must do.  To pay off a debt, her grandfather sends her to another man who has paid for her virginity.  This agonizing rape at such a young age is her first encounter with what will become almost a lifetime of heartbreak, as soon afterward her grandfather sells her into sexual slavery at the age of twelve.

Somaly goes from brothel to brothel in an unending cycle of abuse and rape.  As if the the forced prostitution isn’t hard enough, she’s abused with unthinkable methods including snakes and maggots being poured all over her body.

With this physical devastation, naturally, an emotional devastation comes as well.  Somaly literally feels like garbage, always dirty, ugly, and unworthy.  But of all of this Somaly says,

This was ordinary prostitution.  Stinking mouths and bodies, dirty rooms, violence.  The blows hurt, but the act itself was much worse.  Sometimes there would be only two or three men a day, sometimes many more.  If there weren’t enough, Li would tell Aunty Peuve not to feed us, so we’d try harder.  If there were too many, you hurt inside and out, until you managed to shut all feeling off.

It’s still happening, today, tonight.  Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book.  My story doesn’t matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don’t sleep at night.  They haunt me.

Ordinary prostitution?  How sad that there is even such a thing!  The effects are longlasting, as Somaly recounts:

The memories that torment me most are those of rape and the stink of sperm.  In brothels, they don’t bother changing sheets much.  The smell of sperm is everywhere.  It’s unsufferable.  Even today, I often have the sense that I’m breathing in the smell of whorehouses.  The custoemrs were dirty.  They never showered . . .

I lived amid this stench for so long, that I can’t bear it now.  Even fifteen years later, I feel dirtied by it.  So I was myself like a madwoman, put cream on and cover myself in eau de toilette in order to mask the stench that persues me.  At home I have a cupboard full of perfume.  I spend money to blot out a smell that exists only in my imagination.  I try to chase it away with the contents of my bottles.

As Somaly enters her late teens/early twenties she manages to escape the brothels with the help of a French aid worker (it’s not as angelic as you think, he does start off as a customer).  She begins to attend some classes and even lives in France for almost two years.  When she returns to Cambodia, she is no longer the same woman.  She’s mad as hell, she’s bold, and she’s not going to let what happened to her happen to other young girls.

Somaly becomes the angel that she herself could have used when she was younger.  She founds an organization to rescue girls, builds shelters, raids brothels, takes down judges in court, and rescues thousands of women and children in not only Cambodia, but also Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.  It’s difficult work.  Now with two children of her own, their lives were continually threatened and she almost lost her own daughter to sexual prostitution when she was kidnapped.  She witnesses children as young as six being sold for their virginity, being sewn up, and then sold over again.  Many at the hands of their own parents, who don’t view them as a child, but rather as a means to their paycheck.  The abuse is getting worse and the girls are becoming younger.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports from Cambodia:

Sex trafficking is a industry that brings in $9.5 billion a year.  Sounds daunting to take on doesn’t it?  Why does she keep persevering?

For the moment, our opponents are winning the war, but we’ve won one battle at least.  They’ve lost face and respect.  We’ve investigated this traffic, exposed it for what it is, and made it shameful.  We’ve shown that these people aren’t invincible, and I’m glad we’ve managed that.  People ask me how I can bear to keep doing what I do.  I’ll tell you.  The evil that’s been done to me is what propels me on.  Is there any way to exorcise it?

A portion of the proceeds from The Road to Lost Innocence is donated to the Somaly Mam Foundation.  I highly encourage visiting the website, for being such a ugly topic, it’s a beautiful site.  This video gives great insight into the work that Somaly Mam is doing:

A interview with Somaly Mam about The Road to Lost Innocence:

This memoir is a testament to the power of an individual to bring about change in the lives of thousands of girls who have nowhere to turn.  Somaly Mam shows them the beginning of a flicker of hope, the realization that they can get out, and that there is somebody who loves them.  One person can make a difference in this world of unthinkable horror and evil.  I give The Road of Lost Innocence, The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine by Somaly Mam my highest recommendation.

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