The Road of Lost Innocence: As a girl she was sold into sexual slavery, but now she rescues others. The true story of a Cambodian heroine.
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Product Description
A part of the proceeds of this book will be donated to the Somaly Mam Foundation.
A riveting, raw, and gorgeous memoir of tragedy and hope
Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years ancient. For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this treacherous and desperate world, she suffered the cruelty and horrors of human trafficking—rape, torture, deprivation—until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.
Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the tale of her awakening as an liberal and her upsetting and courageous fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, ongoing schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will place you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.
To learn more about how you can help fight human trafficking, visit the foundation’s website: www.somaly.org.
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I loved this book. It is an simple read and the tale is so gripping that I finished it in 1 day. It truely painted a picture of what these women and children went through and the ones that are still in this viscious struggle. The women in my book club were also stirred by the tale which lead us to donate to Somaly Mam’s organization. I recommend everyone to read this, not just women. I recommend this book to parents, persons expecting to have children in the future, or have children in their lives. The book helped me to gain more perspective of prostitutes and how they got to that place in their. lives. I truely hope that everyone can get be aware of this horrible problem of sex trafficking and place an end to it. This problem does not just exist in Cambodia, but in the USA as well. A must read
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This was a moving, sad but honest and courageous telling of this woman’s horrific experiences being sold into the sex slave trade in Cambodia. It is also a telling of her tale of trying to overcome her past by helping others, and her courageous journey to apt the woman she is today, which is my opinion is a pretty special woman indeed. Thank you Somaly Mam for telling your tale and for shedding light on this very right and sad topic, of which until reading your book I knew nothing about.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I have read a lot of tales from survivors of the killing fields. “The Road of Lost Innocence” details a different problem in Cambodia: the child sex trade.
Somaly Mam is a right survivor. Though unconcerned by the holocaust (and that too, was appealing), she enters the world of child prostitution — sold, raped, beaten. Her plot for escape was to marry a rich man. She marries Pierre. Though not rich, he was a foreigner and that was excellent enough.
Mam’s rage and bitterness is apparent throughout. It is understandable, though hard to read at times. She was able to use her rage to start a shelter and rescue child prostitutes at fantastic danger to herself and her family tree.
Mam relates not only her own tale but the tales of some of the children she rescues, all of them so tragic. This book place a human face on a theme I haven’t really thought much about. Very sad.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Somaly Mam’s autobiography is both terrible and terrifying, as we see what members of mankind (parents, traffickers, pimps, government officials) do and are allowed to do with innocent children (even their own). She also paints a bleak picture of her mother country, Cambodia.
Sex trade
The sale of women and female children has permanently existed in Cambodia.
Parents consider their offspring as money on legs, an asset, as cattle. A 12-year ancient virgin girl can be sold for 50 to 100 US$ or used as a deposit for a loan or to pay back debt.
Virgins are especially wanted because men judge that raping a virgin will cure them of Aids (as a replacement for, the child is infected), keep them strong, lengthen their lifespan and lighten their skin. People consider that keeping a virgin or a minor in a luxurious brothel is a status symbol (!).
Once sold into a brothel, no law, no police, no justice can protect the child. It becomes the slave of a violent pimp: `Now I see girls in brothels with nails hammered into their skull.’
Women’s fate
Women are considered as servants. They have to show full obedience to their father and spouse. Being beaten is a part of a `normal’ life. Marriage becomes a prison.
In all-purpose, women don’t like to make like and remain passive.
Cambodia
The Cambodians are traumatized by decades of war: `To survive you must be silent.’ Nobody can be trusted. People can use your words to betray you.
Really, the country is in the ban of moral bankruptcy. `Corruption is like a gangrene at the heart of the officially authorized and the police system.’ The police are involved in the sex trade as owners, guards, protectors and clients.
The revenues of prostitution equal the annual State budget. Traffickers are so rich that they are more powerful than the law. Judges are bribed.
Under the communist government (after the Red Khmer regime) schools (a real way out of poverty) and health care were free. Now, everything is for sale, even doctor’s diplomas. Education is only for the offspring of the wealthy few.
The whole book bathes in an atmosphere of racism (against dark-skinned people).
This intensely moving `human’ tragedy gives an extremely gloomy impression of (a part of) mankind. But, there is hope. One brilliant star at the firmament, Somaly Mam, and her courageous actions made the sex traders loose all respect. Now, her organization can sometimes beat the culprits in court.
Her book is a must read for all persons interested in human scenery and the world we live in.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Though one of the reviewer’s account printed on the back page called Somaly’s book ‘unputdownable”, I have establish myself putting it down many times, so overwhelmed and stricken I was by the descriptions of the torture and behaviour inflicted upon children as young as 5 or 6 years ancient, who have become fodder to the child sex slavery industry.
This book should be required reading in high schools for teenagers about to reach adulthood, to show what is happening in the world today, which strikes the most innocent people, and to help publicize it as just not one more problem in an unperfect developped and developping world, but as an example that something is incorrect when the most powerful of nations, and their governments, do not even have the will to attack a scourge that shames us all as human beings, and for which there is not one excuse, in an ever inter-connected world, not to intervene.
Somaly, a victim of that trade herself since a child, a powerless and pawn, so regularly broken by her plight, shows us what one single person can do, and the message of his book should be for all of us to question ourselves, singly, ” what am i doing to help?”. Because truly, if we were not to reflect we MUST do something, then our silence makes us co-conspirator, to this tragedy, this crime against humanity.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5