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How did you first get involved?
In 2004 my family and I saw a Dateline special on Television called ‘Children for Sale’ depicting Cambodian and Vietnamese girls who were being sexually trafficked to Phnom Penh. Our primary motivation was to get over there and find the greatest need. After our initial visit we really felt there was a critical need for quality aftercare. We eventually quit our corporate jobs, sold our house, cars, stuff, and moved to Cambodia with our three kids to start an aftercare program.
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What are the effects of sexual exploitation on a young woman?
First and foremost, I think it degrades a person as a human being and can make them feel that they’re not a person anymore. They are trapped in a no win situation. There are obviously physical and emotional factors involved but I think that the most devastating effect is that it crushes girls’ dreams and opportunities for the future.
Tell us about your approach to aftercare
My wife and I looked at the programmes that we had seen and many of them were very residentially focused. We wanted to do something which was modelled on a home-like environment as we really felt that the girls needed some aspect of re-parenting. We take a maximum of 20 girls at a time and really focus attention on each one, so we have a very high staff to girl ratio in the programme. We’re really focused on helping girls realise their dreams so a lot of the programme is focussed around helping them in the process of looking at what their strengths and weaknesses are and what they might be able to achieve in life. The next phase is helping them make those dreams a reality.
Can you share a story of one of the girls you’ve worked with?
There was a young girl we worked with a couple of years ago who had been trafficked into a brothel in Thailand. When she came to us she really felt her only value in life was to clean toilets and maybe clean someone’s house for a living. We started exploring with her what her potential might be and discovered that she had no self value and didn’t believe she could do anything more.
One day we were in a meeting with a Thai organisation and we were having a quad-lingual conversation in French, English, Thai and Khmer. This young girl walked in and overheard us. She stepped in and started translating from Thai to Cambodian, so our staff could easily understand. I was really impressed, actually shocked, and so over dinner I asked her where she learnt that. She dropped her head between her shoulders and said that she’d learnt it in the brothels – that’s how you survive, you learn to speak the host language. I asked if she had ever thought of using that and becoming a translator.
It was funny because it was like there was a light that had been turned off inside her and something turned it back on again. She said ‘I dreamt when I was a little girl that I could become a translator and I thought what a dignified job this could be.’ It just broke my heart when she then said ‘I didn’t know I could have a dream.’
We worked really hard with her and we put her into a language and translation school so she could learn formal Thai. She now works as a peer counsellor doing translation work with an organisation near the Thai-Cambodian border and is doing really well working with other survivors of sex trafficking.
What can people here in the UK do to support the work you’re doing? What can we do to help?
I think there are probably three things people could do. One – there are so many people who still don’t know that there’s an issue. So number one is speaking up and being an advocate. Two - people can support the work we’re doing through donating on our website and through social media. And thirdly - if people have professional skills, particularly in the areas of social work or associated programmes in terms of empowering young girls, then we would love to have those people involved in the work we are doing.
Is there anything you haven’t said so far in this interview that you want people in the UK to know?
One of the things that has really hit me strongly is that there’s a lot of attraction to the issue of human trafficking and it’s a very trendy topic for people to talk about. I think that often the thing we forget is that there actually are victims at the other end of it, that this is a very serious issue. One of the core mission statements we use as an organisation is that freedom without a future is, in some ways, another form of slavery. The things that we do for those who have been exploited – the healing & restoration process – really need to be focussed on giving them a renewed and real future so that they don’t become victimised and exploited again.
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