NSFW

I get to visit a lot of strange places as part of my work exploring the net. None stranger than The Real Porn Wiki Leaks where I found Sex Slave Story Revealed to be Fabricated.

“My name is Meas Ratha and I am 14 years old. I was born in the province of Takeo and I have seven brothers and sisters. My family is very poor. My father has disappeared. One year ago my mother fell seriously ill. I was completely distraught. I was very young and I didn’t know what to do,” the young Ms. Ratha says to the camera. She then cries and receives a comforting squeeze of support from Ms. Mam.

“They locked me up in a room and at that time I knew I had been deceived,” she continues.

The documentary goes on to explain how the young girl had been promised a job as a waitress in Phnom Penh, but wound up a captive in a brothel. Later, she is filmed playing musical chairs, skipping rope, singing alongside other girls being cared for inside the Afesip center and helping Ms. Mam treat an AIDS patient called Tom Dy.

Sixteen years since the documentary was televised, Ms. Ratha—now 32 years old and married—said her testimony for the France 2 channel was fabricated and scripted for her by Ms. Mam as a means of drumming up support for the organization.

“The video that you see, everything that I put in is not my story,” Ms. Ratha said in an interview last month. Ms. Ratha, who was simultaneously anxious and determined to let people know the truth, said that she did not want to cause trouble for Ms. Mam’s NGO, which had provided an education for her, but that she could no longer continue a lie that had followed her for half her life.

“Somaly said that…if I want to help another woman I have to do [the interview] very well,” Ms. Ratha said.

“You know, my reputation has been lost because of this video,” said Ms. Ratha, who speaks competent English, adding that she had struggled to live with being typecast as a former sex slave since agreeing to tell the fabricated story.

“Everybody saw me and say ‘I a prostitute. Her mother sold her.’ They say like this. Everybody looks down on me.”

It must be hell thinking you are marrying a supposed experienced former sex slave and then finding out that you had actually married a liar. If it was me I think I’d prefer being branded a former sex worker rather than being branded a liar. And now this woman is stuck with both.

And what about Ms. Mam whose cause is so just that she would suborn perjury to further it? Were there no real cases she could use? No real people who would speak out? And because of that she had to talk some unfortunate teenager into lying?

It is getting so I don’t feel like a MOS (Member of the Species) much. Well I certainly do have my bad habits. I work hard to make sure lying is not one of them. I believe that is one of the worst crimes a human can commit. Knowingly sending false signals. Yeah. I’ll tell social lies. I don’t think you can be a part of a social species without doing some of that. But to be part of falsifying a documentary which is to a certain extent evidence? That is a lie too far – for me.

Back to the story of Ms. Mam. It gets worse.

Last year, Ms. Mam finally admitted, following public scrutiny, that she had made false claims in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, in which she said that eight girls she rescued from the sex industry had been killed by the Cambodian army after they raided her organization’s shelter. Police officials and Ms. Mam’s ex-husband also last year strongly denied long-standing and highly publicized claims by Ms. Mam that her daughter was kidnapped by human traffickers in 2006 when she was 14 years old. The traffickers, she claimed, had videotaped her daughter being gang-raped in retaliation for her work with victims of the sex trade. Police said they were baffled by the claims, while Ms. Mam’s former partner said the story was a publicity stunt to raise funds for her organization.

Does this mean sex trafficking is not a serious problem? Or not as serious as portrayed? Heck if I know. Or maybe it is just a subterfuge so people at the UN can indulge in young girls while pretending to help them? It wouldn’t be the first time.