One of the most heartbreaking things I learned about while in Asia is the sale of young women into the sex trade. Among one of the minority groups in Cambodia, for example, families sell their daughters to those who run this loathsome business. A fourteen year old girl brings $1000. For a poverty stricken family, this is a huge sum of money. The minimum wage for factory workers is $50 per month, so this represents nearly two years' wages.
How can parents do this? My friend, Susan Lucasse, who lives in that part of the world, helped me to figure this out. She explained that parents there have children with the expectation that the children will take care of their parents. The money received from the sale of a daughter is one way of supporting the parents.
Doesn't anyone care about the welfare of the girl involved? Yes. Several Christian ministries do. Phany, who ministers to children at risk, for example, is concerned enough to train pastors to help these young women. In one town that is a tourist center, they counted over 100 brothels and more than 70 of these use underage girls. How can they help these young girls?
Recently two pastors attended a conference in Phnom Penh. One evening they noticed that young men on motorbikes brought girls into a certain hotel near where they were staying and evidently collected them a while later. Curious, they went into the hotel and asked about it. The clerk at the desk asked if they would like to rent a room for an hour and they said, "Yes." What a huge risk for a pastor to take! Some time later they brought in a young girl and they explained that they did not want to have sex with her, that they were pastors and wondered how they could help her. As she wept out her story, one of them recorded it on his cell phone. The girl had been sold three months earlier and was now in intense pain, but her bosses wouldn't let her stop serving customers. They promised to try to help her and went about finding out where they could take her to a safe house and how to get her the help she needed.
The next night they went back and asked if they could have the same girl. "She's with another customer." They said that they would wait for her, but to no avail. Evidently the bosses don't let these girls form relationships either with customers or even with one another. They tend to move the girls around so that they don't go back to the same places.
So the pastors agreed to have two other girls. When the two girls arrived they explained once again that they didn't want to have sex with them, but that they are pastors and wanted to help them in any way possible. The pastors asked about the girl from the previous night and the girls thought that they knew who she is but had no idea where she might be. Would these girls like to get out of the trade? Absolutely. So the pastors, who by now had made all the necessary arrangements, took them out through the hotel lobby, explaining that they were taking these girls out to dinner, took them into a taxi and off to a safe house.
There are groups that help these girls in practical ways. For one thing they are taught to read. Often girls who have been sold into the sex trade have no more than a second grade education. And they are taught a new trade so that they can earn a living. Near where I stayed in Phnom Penh there is a restaurant, begun by an English woman to give some of these young women employment, but which has now been turned over to eight of them, who run it and are making quite a success of their business. Nearby there is a "pamering room" where some of these women give manicures, facials, neck and shoulder massages and are adding to their reperatoire of skills as they seek to earn their living in different ways.
Above all, these women have experienced a spiritual transformation as they have come to trust Christ as their Savior, and know that their past is forgiven and wiped clean. They are truly new people, transformed women, daughters of the King.
"This is my Father's world, Oh let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet."
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