Invisible Chains (4 page)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada acknowledges that it knows of no country that is immune to human trafficking. The outrageous crime assumes many forms and has different names in different societies. In some cases the labels diminish the impact of the exploitation, reducing calls for action to eradicate it.

In Cambodia, a
mama-san
is a trafficker who brokers the sale of young girls and women for sex acts in brothels. In India, a “bonded labour holder” is a trafficker who preys on impoverished families by offering loans in return for the servitude of their children. In Ghana, “fishing masters” are traffickers who force young children to do the dangerous work of retrieving nets underwater, deceiving their families into believing their children are being educated and taught a useful trade. In Canada and the United States, pimps are traffickers who use violence to profit from the sale of teenage girls and women for sex. While each of these countries has its own label for these diverse exploitative practices, all of them fall under the agreed international
definition of human trafficking. The importance of the
Palermo Protocol
is its reflection of a broad commitment to end modern-day slavery, to identify its countless manifestations by a single name, and to work together to eradicate them.

2

TRAVELLING SEX OFFENDERS FUELLING DEMAND ABROAD

H
uman trafficking in far-off lands may seem removed from the lives of average Canadians. Victims like Srey Mao, however, know all too well that travelling sex offenders from numerous countries, including Canada, have contributed to the demand that has enslaved them.

Srey Mao grew up in Kampong Cham province in central Cambodia, where, as far as we can tell, she enjoyed life in a remote village. It all changed when Srey Mao's mother sold her to a brothel owner in the bustling national capital of Phnom Penh when she was seventeen.

Once the money had changed hands, Srey Mao was taken directly to a hotel room where a foreign “child sex tourist” raped and beat her while another man, likely paid by her owner, guarded the door.

From that day, Srey Mao's life became a chain of sexual abuse by countless men who rented her body from her
mama-san.
After several months, Srey Mao finally managed to escape and, in search of comfort and safety, travelled from Phnom Penh to the home of an aunt. There she encountered rejection, not just from her aunt but from the entire village, which stigmatized her as a prostitute. No one in the village allowed her to stay with them, nor would they feed her. In desperation, hoping her aunt would acknowledge that she wasn't responsible for her fate, Srey Mao slept beneath the window of her
aunt's bedroom. Her aunt was unyielding: Srey Mao was labelled a prostitute and deserved no love or support.

It was Srey Mao's mother who found her—and only because she was on her way to Phnom Penh to sell Sarun, Srey Mao's younger sister, to the same
mama-san
who'd purchased Srey Mao. When her mother ignored Srey Mao's pleas not to condemn Sarun to the same hell, Srey Mao offered to take her little sister's place. Her mother agreed, and Srey Mao was sold back to the brothels to save her sister.

Srey Mao's love for her little sister was more powerful than the evil that had ravaged her. Although she'd been shunned and treated worse than an animal, her spirit hadn't been crushed.

Within three hours of agreeing to take her sister's place, Srey Mao had been re-sold and was again forced to accept a steady stream of men, at least fifteen, each night. As before, she attempted to escape. This time, however, she was caught and severely beaten before being forced back into the role her “owners” had paid for her to perform.

For six months, hundreds of local men and foreign tourists raped and sexually abused her. In a courageous moment, Srey Mao attempted another escape, this one successful, and made her way through the countryside of Kampong Cham, hoping this time her family would take her in. Again she was rejected. With no one to turn to, Srey Mao returned to Phnom Penh where, hopeless in the face of people, power, and a system she couldn't escape, she attempted suicide by ingesting a mixture of drugs and collapsed unconscious in the street.

Srey Mao awoke in a hospital bed. Someone—a modern-day Good Samaritan—had found her and brought her there. The man hadn't left his name, but without a doubt he'd saved her life.

After hearing the story, doctors at the hospital pooled their money and gave it to Srey Mao, then helped her obtain a bed at a recovery centre for rescued victims of sex trafficking. It was a safe place, away from the
mama-sans
and other traffickers, landscaped with flowers and trees, and staffed by people who rejected the idea that anyone who'd been treated like Srey Mao should be stigmatized for life. She
shared the centre with other girls and young women who'd been sold into sexual slavery to meet the demand from tourists, expatriates, and businessmen from Western countries, as well as local men looking for young bodies to purchase.

When I met Srey Mao at the recovery centre, she was nineteen years old and making plans for her sister to join her. As an at-risk child, Sarun would be safe at the centre and not sold into sex slavery. Srey Mao herself was learning to read and write in the traditional Khmer language of Cambodia and, for the first time in years, beginning to make her own decisions and shape her own future.

To prepare survivors to become self-supporting, the recovery centre offered the young women their choice of three training programs: sewing to make clothes, cooking to start a small restaurant, or haircutting and hairstyling to launch a salon.

Srey Mao chose sewing. She wanted to learn how to make beautiful dresses for girls and young women to wear and help them feel good about themselves.

Exporting the problem but not the fault

It's not known what proportion of the men who bought the power to abuse Srey Mao were foreigners, and how many were from Canada. Some likely were. Foreign men who leave their own countries in fear of arrest, exposure, and punishment contribute to the demand for young women and girls as commodities.

Purchasers of sex acts with underage girls and boys know the odds: They are more likely to be identified, arrested, and prosecuted in Canada than in many countries that suffer from corruption, poverty, and an ineffective legal system.

To those who can hardly fathom a single act of child sexual abuse, encountering it on a widespread and systematic scale, as I did in Cambodia, produces something between shock and amazement that quickly morphs into disgust.

To help expose the problem, I went undercover with other members of The Future Group in 2001 at the request of a local
human rights investigator. On this particular evening, our destination was a “karaoke bar” in Phnom Penh that caters mainly to expatriates or tourists whose sexual preference involves underage girls. Of course, the karaoke bar was merely a front for unspeakable crimes of child sexual abuse. The patrons of this establishment came from Australia, Japan, the United States, various European countries—and Canada. Since we were from Canada, the local investigator asked us to come with him to help
him
gain access more easily. That being a Canadian made entry to the facility effortless caused me to feel ashamed of my nationality for the first time in my life.

When we entered the facility, we were met with a large glass window extending from floor to ceiling. Behind it, seated on small bleachers that you might find in a hockey arena in any small town in Canada, were over a dozen young girls. Bright lights glared down on them, and they wore red or blue tags fastened to their tank tops. Their eyes looked distant, their expressions defeated. They were, I estimated, between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. I felt like I was in a pet store, looking at an aquarium, which was not inaccurate. These girls were for sale.

Individual men or small groups peered into the glass enclosure, told the
mama-san
the number of the girl or girls they wanted, and negotiated a price. They were then escorted to a private room to sexually abuse them. In contrast, we were busy scanning the rows of girls to count them, determine their approximate ages and nationalities, and look for any obvious signs of physical abuse. Unbeknownst to the proprietor, we were investigating the front, hopefully to help any of the girls inside who wanted to escape.

Suddenly, the proprietor sidled up to me and asked which one I wanted.

Stuttering, I replied that I didn't know.

“Blue mean Cambodia girl, red mean Vietnam girl,” she explained.

I glanced over at the other researchers, whose expressions deliberately concealed the disgust I, too, was feeling. Then I said, “Maybe we'll just start with a beer and sing some karaoke.”

After our group declined to select any girl, we were escorted down a dark hallway with doors on either side and led into our own room. The expressions on the girls' faces remained fixed as we passed by. Inside we found a windowless room with an old fake-leather sofa and a “loveseat.” A lamp stood in one corner and a disco light overhead spread its random sparkles throughout the room.

For an hour, we drank Heineken and sang horrible renditions of Céline Dion songs as the
mama-san
began sending some of the young girls into the room. The local human rights investigator with us was fluent in Khmer. He spoke to the young girls while we continued to give performances of songs that would have earned us a swift rejection from
American Idol.
In hushed tones, he confirmed that underage girls were being held and exploited in this karaoke-brothel. They were glad that we were planning to get word to the police about this secret den of exploitation. Yet we were careful not to encourage false hope— better than we, they knew the odds of intervention were extremely low.

Thanks to lack of resources, widespread corruption, and broad acceptance of the sex tourism industry by many officials, the local authorities pursued few cases, even though serious criminal offences were being committed contrary to Cambodian law. In some cases, however, pressure from an international NGO like ours could help. So the next day, we used our reports from that evening to encourage the local prosecutor to launch an official investigation into the karaoke bar–brothel and rescue the underage girls caged there.

Generally, only the most egregious cases involving extremely young victims, such as those under ten, or cases involving severe physical violence would spur recalcitrant police and prosecutors to proceed with a rescue. Whatever local officials think of the practice, sex tourism brings millions of dollars in foreign currency to Cambodia, a country in dire economic straits. What would replace this money stream if the attraction vanished overnight? Compared with neighbouring countries like Thailand, Cambodia has little to
attract tourists beyond Angkor Wat, the twelfth-century temple sacred to Hindus and Buddhists, which appears on the country's flag. Cambodia is ranked as the 187th-poorest country on the planet with a per capita weekly income of U.S.$36.50. Yet the average price paid by foreign sex offenders for the virginity of an underage girl is U.S.$300–$700. With that kind of economic incentive for sex trafficking, only the most moral and courageous officials choose to demand an end to the racket, or at least prosecute the most offensive brothel keepers.

Occasionally a case actually moves forward, and we hoped our reports would lead to at least some girls being rescued and given a fresh start at one of the few recovery centres in the city.

We applied as much pressure as possible on authorities, encouraged those who continued to operate the recovery centres, helped improve programs to assist those who were rescued, and, in our own ways, prayed for the girls who remained enslaved.

That was almost ten years ago, and the image of those young girls inside that glass prison continues to disturb me.

Sexual abuse at home and abroad

Those who travel beyond Canada's borders to pursue their sexual abuse of children and women don't always restrict these repugnant actions to foreign locations. Donald Bakker didn't.

Crab Park was created as an urban oasis for residents of Vancouver's poor and crime-ridden Downtown Eastside. With old railway tracks to the south, commercial shipping ports to the east, and the sea bus terminal to the west, Crab Park may not be the most scenic and inviting public space in Vancouver, but for various reasons it has become a focal point for sexual exploitation issues. A park bench overlooking Burrard Inlet bears a plaque with the names of missing prostituted women. A local newspaper speculated that “some of the missing women may have found temporary respite here from the daily terror of their lives,” but the opposite appears to be true. For a time, an isolated forested area of the park had become a convenient and
discreet place where drugs and sex were for sale, and it is now known as the place where Canada's first overseas case of child sex tourism was discovered.

On a noon hour in late 2003, a Vancouver city worker having lunch near the waterfront heard a woman's screams from the trees and shrubbery in Crab Park. He called the police, who were present when forty-year-old Donald Bakker emerged from the bushes followed by a visibly upset woman. Officers stopped the two and examined a bag Bakker had been carrying. With evidence that he had sexually abused the woman, the police placed Bakker under arrest and seized the bag and its contents.

Inside the bag, police found a video camera and several videotapes that revealed Bakker torturing and mistreating a series of women. With a warrant to search Bakker's car and home, investigators found more videotapes, including one of Bakker sexually abusing Asian girls between seven and twelve years old.

The police turned to an RCMP officer with international expertise on the sexual exploitation of children in an effort to find these girls: Brian McConaghy, a dedicated officer who now operates a charity in Cambodia that helps to rehabilitate survivors of sex slavery. McConaghy noted that the children on the videotapes were speaking a combination of Vietnamese and Khmer, and that some wore a
kroma,
a checkered scarf common in Cambodia.