Famous Cambodian anti-sex slavery organization shuts down

PHNOM PENH

An anti-sex trafficking organization founded by a Cambodian woman who won awards before being accused of fabricating key elements of her autobiography announced Saturday it had ceased all operations weeks ago.

A statement posted on the Somaly Mam Foundation website -- which had been cleared of all other content -- said, “As of September 30, we officially ceased all operations, ended all grant funding, and permanently closed our doors. This was a very difficult decision, but we feel strongly that this is the best course of action for our many wonderful supporters.”

Commending anti-trafficking organizations that share the values of “transparency, integrity and service,” it added, “We decided that going forward, the right opportunity for our staff and our supporters would be to support those many great organizations.”

Somaly Mam stepped down as president of her foundation in May after lawyers discovered she had falsely claimed that she had been trafficked as a child, was raised in a brothel, that her daughter had been kidnapped by sex traffickers, and that a close associate had lost an eye after being kidnapped, tortured and mutilated in a brothel.

A statement from the Somaly Mam Foundation released May 28 said the group retained a law firm to investigate Mam’s background and that of Long Pros, a young Cambodian woman who was promoted by Mam as a "symbol of sex trafficking."

The 43-year-old Mam’s story detailed in "The Road of Lost Innocence" of having been trafficked into brothels as a child began to unravel in 2012 after a series of investigative pieces by local newspaper The Cambodia Daily. Newsweek magazine later ran a cover story detailing the fabrications.

Among the most serious of the lies are false claims that traffickers had kidnapped Mam’s daughter, that the Cambodian army had murdered eight girls from her shelter, and that Long Pros -- who was never in fact trafficked -- sustained the injury to her eye during the removal of a facial tumor.

Another woman, Meas Ratha, came forward last year and told the Daily that she had been coached by Mam to say she was a sex slave.

Both Pros and Ratha had actually been sent by their impoverished families to receive care from anti-trafficking organization AFESIP, the articles revealed.

Newsweek also provided proof that Mam herself -- who claimed she was an orphan born in the remote northeastern province of Mondulkiri who never knew her real name or age -- was never trafficked but had a normal childhood in a different province, Kampong Cham.

Pierre Legros, Mam’s ex-husband and co-founder of AFESIP -- who resigned from the organization a decade ago -- had told The Anadolu Agency that although Mam had clearly lied, much of the fault lay with an aid establishment eager to throw money at the problem of human trafficking in a naive effort to help developing countries such as Cambodia.

“This is a huge issue, and my voice today is not against Somaly, it’s against the system,” he said. “If you want money, if you’re an NGO, you’re going to use everything.”

Mam has received widespread international acclaim for her work over the past decade, picking up a Woman of the Year award from Glamour Magazine, being named a CNN Hero, and hobnobbing with celebrities including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and actress Susan Sarandon.

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