Sad Little Girls
Finalist, Canadian Association of Journalists, Investigative Reporting Award, 2004
In Cambodia, SUSAN McCLELLAND reports on a thriving child-sex trade

Maclean's
November 24, 2003



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IT'S AFTER MIDNIGHT and we're cruising slowly along the potholed road that leads to Svay Pak, Phnom Penh's infamous brothel district. It's very dark -- there are no street lamps and the only light comes from flickering candles set in small Buddhist shrines on the roadside. Promisingly, there doesn't seem to be much activity along the road on this hot summer night. Perhaps the Cambodian government's crackdown on the child-sex trade is having an effect. Back in March, the government had closed most of the 50-odd Svay Pak brothels -- known for housing underaged Vietnamese girls -- in an effort to clean up the country's growing image as a pedophile's paradise.

Our car turns right down a steep and bumpy hill, and at the bottom we are jolted back to reality. What look like rundown garages lining a back alley are really brothels full of young girls. Wearing tight clothes and bright lipstick, several sashay over to the car. None of them looks older than 14, but they come on like seasoned streetwalkers, licking their lips and thrusting their tiny chests forward. A shirtless boy, who is maybe 10, pushes himself to the front and gestures for me to roll down the window. "You want girl?" he asks in broken English as the scent of cheap perfume wafts in.

Sitting in another car is Shuvaloy Majumdar, co-chair of The Future Group, a Calgary-based non-profit organization fighting the sex trade. He leans out his window and lies, telling the boy he wants a girl much younger than those on the street. Majumdar has brought me to Svay Pak to show the scale of the child-sex trade, and he knows that children as young as four are available but kept hidden by their pimps in an attempt to avoid police raids. After a brief conversation in Vietnamese with a rough-looking brothel manager, the boy leads Majumdar and three others down a narrow pathway to a small cabin.

Inside, Majumdar takes a seat in a creaky metal chair beside a stained mattress. Within seconds, two girls, who claim they're 6 and 8, join him. Just awakened, they're wearing cotton pajamas and rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. At first, the girls stand silently and rigidly together. The pimp slaps one on the back of the head and the girls begin to awkwardly and unenthusiastically flirt with Majumdar. Shaking, the 6-year-old mumbles, "no boom-boom, just ngam- ngam" (Vietnamese slang for oral sex). But when a photographer who has accompanied Majumdar begins to take some pictures, the pimp and his bodyguards draw guns, thinking Majumdar and the photographer are undercover informants. Thinking fast, the visitors defuse the situation by telling the angry pimp the pictures are for their business -- organizing sex tours out of Thailand. The ruse works and the danger passes.

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Later, we head into downtown Phnom Penh to a popular nightclub, the Martini Pub. Nearly three years ago, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered all the karaoke bars and discotheques closed, saying the establishments were bastions of prostitution. But that didn't last either. The closures were aimed at appeasing international aid organizations who want to see the child-sex trade stopped. But when we arrive at the nightclub, it's business as usual. The patio bar is full of foreign men with young Cambodian girls sitting in their laps, laughing at their jokes. One fat, grey-haired Westerner staggers toward the door with four girls in tow. They head straight for the luxury hotel across the street.

ACCORDING TO United Nations estimates, tens of thousands of children (under 18) are forced into the sex trade around the world each year. Some countries, including Thailand -- long considered the world's child-sex capital -- are cracking down on the trade. In Cambodia, though, the industry thrives. While having sex with a child is illegal, law enforcement is ineffective. Efforts to stop the trade are undercut by corrupt officials and by Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party government, which so far has been loath to interrupt the windfall of a "tourism" industry worth millions a year. "No matter how many laws we sign," says Mu Sochua, Cambodia's former minister of women's and veterans' affairs and a long-time opponent of Hun Sen, "child sex will continue as long as this government is in power."