child trafficking in cambodia.

Human rights advocate, Aaron Cohen, wants to expose Cambodia’s long existing problem of child sex trafficking in Cambodia, an issue that has been virtually swept under the rug.  For years Cohen has been working undercover in the sex trafficking underbelly in order to gain useful information necessary to make arrests of those trafficking women and children.  While Cohen’s fight to stop sex trafficking has taken him around the world, he notes that South Asia is one of the worst and most tragic of cases. While there are no official numbers of people being sex trafficked in Cambodia, the number could be as low as 12.3 million while it could be as high as 27 million. No matter what the estimates present, it is safe to say that even on the low end, 12.3 million is way too many.   Cambodia has been put on the State Department’s Tier 2 Watch List which means that Cambodia’s government “does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making an effort to do so.”  Cambodia has become a destination for men wishing to have sex with virgin minors.

Cohen’s story is categorized by his relationship with 2 sisters he saved from trafficking in Cambodia, Jonty and Channy Thern.  Cohen met them while he was posing undercover in a Cambodian karaoke bar that doubled as a brothel, a common theme in Cambodian life.  Cohen gained the information and video he needed by soliciting for sex and then turned that information over to the police so that a raid could take place. That night Cohen saved 12 underage girls.   Jonty was just 13 years old.  She had been raped and beaten since she began working in the sex trade industry.

Since then, Cohen has seen Jonty and Channy every year.  Tragically, Cohen’s most recent visit to Cambodia was marked by Jonty’s funeral. At the tender age of 17,  Jonty died from liver failure established over years of drug and alcohol abuse from years of being trafficked.  She had been trafficked since the age of 10.  Even though Jonty had been saved from the trade 4 years earlier, the lasting effects of child trafficking continued, resulting in her untimely death [via CNN].