Breaking Free (8 page)

“Life is never ended here in the brothels. Life is in your hand. You can manage it as what you want. The most challenging part is starting new life and forgetting the past.”

~ Somaly Mam

Voices for Change

In 2010, Somaly started a program called Voices for Change. The Voices for Change are girls who were once trafficked or sexually exploited. With Somaly’s help, they became survivors.

And now they are change makers.

These young women see firsthand how Somaly fought her way out of her past, how she went from victim to advocate. They’ve decided they want to become advocates, too. They want to stand up with Somaly and say
This happened to me and it should never happen again
.

Somaly is very clear with the girls who want to join Voices for Change. Advocacy work is not easy. She doesn’t want any of the girls to feel like they have to do it. They often have to face their worst demons by speaking out. Shame. Fear. Reliving nightmares of what can never be undone.

Somaly knows this because she still faces these same demons herself. She is constantly being flown all over the globe to promote her cause and receive awards. She was named one of Vital Voices’ Global Leaders and
Time
’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. She’s opened shelters in multiple countries, too.

But that does not mean it gets easier to share her story. Even today, each time she begins to speak, the words feel as sharp and close as if she were meeting Grandfather for the first time. She does a lot of meditation and work with a psychologist. Most of all, she learns from the love and courage of the girls she saves.

More than four thousand Cambodian women and another three thousand in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam owe their freedom to Somaly. Every time she gets up to relay her history, she thinks of them. She hopes she can reach more girls who may be too fearful to come forward themselves, or feel too “dirty” to see their worth.

Voices for Change has new members and momentum every day. Somaly leads by example. Sometimes when Somaly travels for awareness events, she brings young women of the Voices for Change with her. They tell their stories, too. This way people can see that it’s real girls, no different than you or me, who are fighting this fight. The future of human rights is now their life’s mission.

Back in Cambodia, the Voices for Change help newly rescued girls who come to the shelter, shocked and confused. Voices for Change members guide their new “sisters,” filling in the intake forms and holding hands. Many of the girls in Voices for Change get trained to speak with magistrates and judges, too. They go with Somaly to hear court cases against traffickers and help advocate for victims’ rights to protect young women.

Each condom brought to a brothel.

Each girl walking into an AFESIP clinic for free medical treatment.

Each court case where a trafficker is convicted—there were thirteen in 2012!

These are the victories of Somaly and her Voices for Change. This is the way we make a new world.

And it all started with one little girl who strung a hammock between two trees in a forest that she called home.

“Hope comes true when you see thousands of girls are in your hands and they are smiling. Everyone can’t do everything, but each of you can do one thing to end sex slavery. It starts from you today.”

~ Somaly Mam

Minh Dang

“On my Twitter profile I’m like a list of things. I’m a lover. I’m a friend… an artist. And I don’t really want to carry rocks around all the time, but, yeah, I’m a rock collector.”

~ Minh Dang

Rock Collector

The houses on Minh Dang’s street all looked a lot alike. This was San Jose, California, in the 1990s. Instead of front lawns or swing sets, many people in her neighborhood had a yard full of white quartz rocks and rosebushes. The neighbors smiled at one another before going in and closing their front doors. Nobody got in anyone else’s business or asked too many questions.

Minh spent a lot of time with those rocks in her front yard. They were as bright as stars. Sometimes she pretended they were pieces of the moon or precious gems she could dig up like buried treasure. Minh wasn’t allowed to go any farther than her yard to play, so sitting there in that sea of rocks was the only way she could find fun.

When no one was looking, she talked to those rocks, too. She told them they were beautiful and she gave them names. She picked through carefully and filled shoeboxes with her absolute favorites—the ones that were extra sparkly or had a funny-looking zigzag stripe or maybe a side so smooth that it warmed her hand from the California sun. Minh took good care of those rocks. Her collection grew and grew. She hid her shoeboxes in a corner of the garage. She didn’t want them to get in the way and make anyone in her house angry.

It was hard for Minh to figure out exactly what made her parents so angry all the time. She worked hard to follow the rules. She got good grades at her public school and was a star on her soccer team. She came home every day and did her homework first thing. She kept her mouth shut. But still, she was always in trouble. Only, her parents never called it trouble. They never called it anything.

It was just part of her day, like sunrise or sunset. Every time Minh climbed into bed, she feared that her father would come for her in the dark. Many nights, from the time she was three years old, her father visited her in her bedroom and sexually abused her. With each visit, Minh was overwhelmed with fear and pain. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, but she knew it was wrong. If she cried out or said no, he beat her. And when he was finished, Minh’s mom came in and beat her anyway. She called Minh horrible names and blamed her for what was happening. She treated Minh like a perpetrator instead of a victim. Like an enemy instead of her child.

Both of her parents made it clear that if Minh said anything to anyone, they would send her away to Vietnam (where they were both born), or kill her.

That’s another reason why those rocks in the front yard were so special to Minh. They were really the only things she could talk to. Even if they weren’t people, they felt calm and they seemed to listen to her. They were her best friends; her only friends.

Then one day, when Minh was about ten years old, her mom went looking for something in the garage and Minh heard her yell, “What the *#$@ are these doing here?”

Minh tried to run in and save her rocks, but her mom didn’t even wait for an answer. She just opened the shoeboxes and scattered the insides all over the yard. It didn’t matter that Minh had picked each one and placed them just so. It didn’t matter that she’d packed them in rock “families” and knew all their cracks and edges.

Once her mom went back inside, Minh tried to collect the same rocks again. There were thousands to choose from, but she worked as carefully and as quickly as possible, apologizing to the ones she had to leave behind. She raced to get the rock moms and dads and the little rock children reunited before sundown.

That night her dad raped her again. That night her mom beat her again for “making him do it.”

But the worst part to Minh was the next day when she came home from school and saw that her shoeboxes were empty again. She ran out to the yard and began digging. She begged the rocks to hold on until she found them. Her fingers got scratched and raw as she searched and searched. Then she frantically crammed the shoeboxes in the garage and scrambled to get her homework done before her dad came for her in the dark.

It kept going like this: Rape. Beat. School. Search. Rape. Beat. School. Search.

And then Minh came home from school one day, saw her empty shoeboxes again, and something in her broke. She tore through the rocks outside. None of them looked familiar or beautiful to her anymore. She was so tired of digging, so confused and lonely and hopeless.

Now it was Minh’s turn to get angry.

She threw the empty boxes down and started screaming at the rocks.

“I hate you! I don’t need you! You’re just stupid, stupid rocks!”

She knew these words so well by now. She was just echoing everything that had been screamed at her before.

FICTION:

The sex industry is very secretive. Ladies of the evening stand on street corners or back alleys and proposition people in seedy bars.

FACT:

There are tons of ads in newspapers and online that make it clear they’re selling sex. Hint: anything that says “barely legal”
isn’t legal at all
. Village Voice Media makes an estimated $22 million each year from these ads. Craigslist.com and Backpage.com are also big hotspots for ads. And there are things called “john boards” that list places where people can find commercial sex nearby.

Here’s the Deal …

When Minh turned ten, her father took her to a local café in the Bay area. In the back were private rooms where Minh was told to wait. Soon a man came into Minh’s room and raped her. Minh knew this feeling all too well. She felt faceless, nameless, and lifeless, lying under the stranger like a piece of furniture.

As she was getting dressed, Minh heard her father make a deal with the café owner. He promised to bring Minh to this café regularly so people could pay to use her body however they liked. The café/brothel owner would get a percentage for handling the clients, Minh’s parents would get the rest. Minh’s father told him proudly that she was very obedient.

Minh couldn’t feel her legs as she walked out of that back room. She couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. All she knew was that she’d just been sold—sold by the two people who were supposed to love, nurture, and protect her from all danger.

Now they were the real danger.

Her father pushed her back into the car. It was almost dawn already. Then he drove her home through the streets of San Jose where other moms and dads were turning on the coffeepot, pouring cereal, or opening the curtains and whispering
good morning
to their slumbering children.

When Minh’s father brought her inside, he told her to get in the shower and get ready for school. No one mentioned the deal. Her parents did not even try to explain or apologize. This was her unspoken obligation. Her duty as their daughter.

This was Minh’s routine through middle school and high school. She constantly struggled to stay awake in class after countless sleepless nights. Then she went to soccer practice and tried to do some homework before getting shuttled to the brothel for another eight hours of being raped and beaten. Her life circled around her in a horrible loop, strangling her. Most mornings she saw the dawn as she went home. Sometimes her parents didn’t even pick her up, but they demanded that Minh get home before sunrise. Then Minh scrubbed her body as if she could wash away the night, got dressed, and started all over again.

The only thing that changed for Minh was that there was a little less screaming in her house now. Her parents were too busy driving Minh back and forth to the brothel and managing all the clients. They placed advertisements in Vietnamese newspapers and magazines that stated they had a young girl whose body they were willing to sell. If Minh made a lot of money in one night, her dad took a break from yelling at her. She sometimes even got a smirk from her mom that Minh tried to interpret as a smile.