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Authors: Somaly Mam
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hanging off the bed with the side of it half gone. He shot her again, two or three times, just for sport I think. Then he and the guards put her body in a rice sack and took it away.
Another time a girl was killed by a policeman who came in late one night. He wasn’t a regular client, and it was very late, about 2:00 a.m. This girl—I can’t even remember her name—didn’t want to go with him. She was sick. He was drunk. The yelling woke us all—“Watch, all of you, because this will happen to you too one day if you don’t obey”—and
bang,
she was dead.
Aunty Peuve didn’t say anything. Everyone was frightened of that client because he was a policeman. Everyone in the neighborhood feared Li too, because he had a big stock of weapons and he was known to be very violent. But even Li didn’t do anything about it. The policeman left and the guards took her away in a rice sack, just like Sry. We were garbage in life and garbage in death. They probably threw the sack on the public dump.
Most of the time I was silent. I did what I was told. I told myself I was dead. I had no affection for anyone—not for Aunty Peuve’s children, nor for any of the other girls. I did have some pity. If another girl had had a really brutal time or if she was badly hurt, sometimes I would volunteer to go to a client in her place. But mostly I felt nothing but hatred.
One time, though, I let two girls escape. They were new, straight from the countryside, and they looked alike, with long, dark hair. Aunty Peuve had them tied up, and they were crying. I knew what was waiting for them—the life that would be taken out of them. They would die internally, like me. And for some reason I didn’t want that to happen to them too.
They weren’t the first new girls I’d seen, or even the youngest—they were about fourteen. But when Aunty Peuve left them with me to go out, I untied them. I just said, “Don’t stay here.” I had nothing else to say—I really didn’t talk, and there wasn’t anything else I needed to say. They looked at me—without a word—and they ran.
I was punished. Li hit me hard—his children were crying, because they liked me a lot. By then Li had electrodes hooked up to a kind of car battery. They burned your skin. I still have the marks. I was taken downstairs and beaten for days, three or four, I think. I felt like I was bleeding inside. Afterward I couldn’t work for a few days and when I started working again I had to work even more to reimburse the losses—the girls cost two gold
chi,
about eighty U.S. dollars. After that, I calmed right down and never did anything like it again.
My punishment was harsh, but the way they punish prostitutes today is far worse than anything I ever had to suffer. When I was with Aunty Peuve, except for that one time with the electricity, the punishments were mainly beatings and our own fear—things like the snakes. Now I see girls in brothels with nails hammered into their skulls. That sounds unbelievable, but we have photos. Girls are chained, beaten with electric cables. They go mad. We’ve rescued several children from brothels who have completely lost their minds.
Recently some dead girls were found in the sewer near a brothel: they had drowned. Another time, after a fire, the police found several girls’ bodies, still chained up. They know who owned that brothel—everybody does, but he isn’t picked up and nothing is done about it. He has too many connections, and the girls are nobodies.
The cuts and welts we see on escaped prostitutes these days are unbelievable. The clients do it, or the pimps. Maybe it’s the influence of Chinese films, which are full of torture scenes. The pimps watch them avidly, like a lot of other men.
Nowadays the girls are much younger too. This is because men in Cambodia will pay a thousand dollars to rape a virgin for a week—it’s always a week, for a virgin. Sex with a virgin is supposed to give strength, to lengthen a
Another time a girl was killed by a policeman who came in late one night. He wasn’t a regular client, and it was very late, about 2:00 a.m. This girl—I can’t even remember her name—didn’t want to go with him. She was sick. He was drunk. The yelling woke us all—“Watch, all of you, because this will happen to you too one day if you don’t obey”—and
bang,
she was dead.
Aunty Peuve didn’t say anything. Everyone was frightened of that client because he was a policeman. Everyone in the neighborhood feared Li too, because he had a big stock of weapons and he was known to be very violent. But even Li didn’t do anything about it. The policeman left and the guards took her away in a rice sack, just like Sry. We were garbage in life and garbage in death. They probably threw the sack on the public dump.
Most of the time I was silent. I did what I was told. I told myself I was dead. I had no affection for anyone—not for Aunty Peuve’s children, nor for any of the other girls. I did have some pity. If another girl had had a really brutal time or if she was badly hurt, sometimes I would volunteer to go to a client in her place. But mostly I felt nothing but hatred.
One time, though, I let two girls escape. They were new, straight from the countryside, and they looked alike, with long, dark hair. Aunty Peuve had them tied up, and they were crying. I knew what was waiting for them—the life that would be taken out of them. They would die internally, like me. And for some reason I didn’t want that to happen to them too.
They weren’t the first new girls I’d seen, or even the youngest—they were about fourteen. But when Aunty Peuve left them with me to go out, I untied them. I just said, “Don’t stay here.” I had nothing else to say—I really didn’t talk, and there wasn’t anything else I needed to say. They looked at me—without a word—and they ran.
I was punished. Li hit me hard—his children were crying, because they liked me a lot. By then Li had electrodes hooked up to a kind of car battery. They burned your skin. I still have the marks. I was taken downstairs and beaten for days, three or four, I think. I felt like I was bleeding inside. Afterward I couldn’t work for a few days and when I started working again I had to work even more to reimburse the losses—the girls cost two gold
chi,
about eighty U.S. dollars. After that, I calmed right down and never did anything like it again.
My punishment was harsh, but the way they punish prostitutes today is far worse than anything I ever had to suffer. When I was with Aunty Peuve, except for that one time with the electricity, the punishments were mainly beatings and our own fear—things like the snakes. Now I see girls in brothels with nails hammered into their skulls. That sounds unbelievable, but we have photos. Girls are chained, beaten with electric cables. They go mad. We’ve rescued several children from brothels who have completely lost their minds.
Recently some dead girls were found in the sewer near a brothel: they had drowned. Another time, after a fire, the police found several girls’ bodies, still chained up. They know who owned that brothel—everybody does, but he isn’t picked up and nothing is done about it. He has too many connections, and the girls are nobodies.
The cuts and welts we see on escaped prostitutes these days are unbelievable. The clients do it, or the pimps. Maybe it’s the influence of Chinese films, which are full of torture scenes. The pimps watch them avidly, like a lot of other men.
Nowadays the girls are much younger too. This is because men in Cambodia will pay a thousand dollars to rape a virgin for a week—it’s always a week, for a virgin. Sex with a virgin is supposed to give strength, to lengthen a
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