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MacLeans Magazine
Child-Sex Trade
Thriving in Cambodia
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."
The sex trade in Cambodia expanded in the early 1990s to service UN troops overseeing the transition to the current democratic government. The child-sex trade began to appear when the UN troops left and brothel owners discovered they could make more money catering to foreign tourists and local pedophiles wanting sex with kids.
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Today, officials estimate that the average age of the estimated 20,000 sex workers in Phnom Penh is 15. "Some men are fascinated by sleeping with virgins - they get excited thinking that they're the first to show a pre-pubescent girl how to have sex," says Beth Hedva, a Calgary psychologist who has studied the child-sex industry. "Cambodia is catering to this market."
The climate was ripe. War, revolution and the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s left the nation's social structures in ruins. The Vietnamese, who ruled for 10 years ending in 1989, did little to improve things. "Because of the revolution, family ties were shattered," says Cambodian law professor Lao Mong Hay, a guest lecturer at the University of Toronto. "A generation grew up in an environment where people did anything to survive. They didn't learn morals."
Most Cambodians are also desperately poor - per capita annual income is about $350. Child-sex workers tell hauntingly similar stories of being sold into prostitution by family members or friends. "Prostitution and the poor treatment of women and children is thousands of years old, but this form of sex-slavery has no precedent in history," says Majumdar.
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