Authors: Abby Sher
Breaking Free
Praise for
Breaking Free
“The harrowing real-life stories of three girls who turned their experiences as sex-trafficked children into a fight to destroy the practice…The girls’ stories could be too devastating to read save for each tale’s conclusion, detailing the efforts these women have made to rescue girls and eliminate childhood slavery… Harrowing, yes—and inspiring.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“If we want real, systemic change, we must listen to survivors. Abby Sher shares these survivors’ truths with care and compassion, highlighting the courage and resilience of each woman. This is an excellent read for anyone who believes that ending exploitation is possible.”
—Lauren Hersh,
Equality Now
“This book is invaluable for young people to learn about not just the horrors of sex trafficking but also how victims can become survivors and finally leaders.”
—Prof. Ruchira Gupta,
Founder and President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide
“Breaking Free
is a courageous and compassionate exploration of a deeply difficult subject matter, filled with hope and solutions as well as important truths. I would say it should be required reading for every high school, but really, it should be required reading for every HUMAN.”
—Alysia Reiner,
Actress (Orange Is the New Black)
“These searing, harrowing stories tell us the dark truth of the lives of enslaved girls and women, our own sisters and daughters. In Abby Sher’s generous, thoughtful prose, they also become tales of unbelievable courage, hope, and triumph.”
—Jennifer Finney Boylan,
author of She’s Not There
“They speak for the voiceless, the scared, and the still enslaved. They speak for people everywhere with a dream to better the world… This is a must read for everyone.”
—Missy Taylor,
reviewer at A Midsummer Night’s Read
Copyright © 2014 by Abby Sher.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Print edition ISBN: 978-1-4380-0453-2
eISBN: 978-1-4380-9255-3
All inquiries should be addressed to:
Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
250 Wireless Boulevard
Hauppauge, NY 11788
www.barronseduc.com
Some names have been changed in this book to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.
Contents
We are all part of the movement
for Samantha,
who taught me how we are all connected
Don’t call me hero. Call me human.
When I started this book, I thought sex trafficking happened only far away—in small villages with no running water and maybe the occasional light bulb for electricity. I know that sounds ignorant and kind of snooty. Let me explain: I grew up in a sleepy town in Westchester County, New York, where my greatest fear was someone else wearing the same dress as me to the junior prom. I knew all my neighbors, my mom was in the PTA, and I was taught that I’d be safe as long as I didn’t take candy from strangers.
I was so wrong.
Sex trafficking happens all over the world, including here. Sex trafficking is defined as the act of forcing, coercing, or conning someone into performing any sexual act. According to U.S. law, anyone younger than eighteen who is selling or being sold for sex acts is a victim of sex trafficking, whether it’s done by force or not.
The girls and women in these pages are not only brave survivors of sex trafficking; they are also inspiring leaders in the anti-trafficking movement. After they broke free, they chose to dedicate their lives to activism to help other sex-trafficking victims become empowered survivors, too. They each work every day with the hope of creating a world where sex trafficking has been stopped once and for all. They speak to everyone from convicted traffickers to the leaders of the United Nations, because they know that change can only happen when we all work together.
The first story comes from Somaly Mam, who grew up in the deep forests of Cambodia. After being abandoned by her parents, she was sold into sexual slavery by someone who claimed to be her grandfather. Today, she runs The Somaly Mam Foundation, one of the most successful organizations in the anti-trafficking movement—freeing and educating girls and women just like her.
The second account is from Minh Dang, a young woman who grew up in a quiet suburb of California. Behind closed doors, her parents were abusing her and selling her to local brothels for most of her life. Minh is now very well known for her work as an anti-trafficking advocate and recently got an award at the White House for being a Champion of Change.
The third tale is from Maria Suarez, a Mexican immigrant who was not only held captive by her trafficker in the United States for several years, but was then imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit. The first thing Maria did after getting out of prison was to start counseling victims of abuse and trafficking. She is now starting the Maria Suarez Foundation, which will prevent abuse and rescue and rehabilitate survivors.
For every person in these pages, there are thousands more. I met a lot of survivors, activists, lawyers, and counselors who talked to me but didn’t want to be quoted in this book because it could jeopardize someone’s safety. A lot of girls and women who are just breaking free of the sex-trafficking nightmare cannot risk being named. But even when I didn’t quote them in these pages, I did hear their stories gratefully, and I hope I do justice to their words about what it was like to get out, how they want the world to see them, and where they need to go from here.
Everyone who agreed to be named in this book did so willingly. Sometimes I used pseudonyms when people requested them. When I couldn’t be in the same room as someone to hear her story—like with Somaly Mam—we shared ideas over e-mail. I wrote Somaly’s story as if I were inside her head, so I could be as close as possible to her experience. But of course, we can never know exactly what anyone is thinking, so it’s important to note that while every facet of the story is true, it is my interpretation of Somaly’s journey.
With Minh and Maria, I had the great privilege of sitting next to them in cafés as they relayed their stories. It was hard for me to believe that these events really happened to them and that they were here to tell me their tales. How could these women who look calm, cool, and even hopeful be sitting here with me, sipping milkshakes while reliving their harrowing pasts?
It’s much easier to see survivors of sex trafficking as superhuman warriors, or their stories as too horrible to be true, but that only makes it easier to think of sex trafficking as someone else’s problem. Superheroes wear jetpacks and capes and appear in comic books. They don’t need help, except for maybe a sidekick to dust them off when they fall.
Talking to these women made it clear that I had to rethink my image of them and of myself. As I often heard them say, most importantly:
We are human, just like you.
No matter where we come from, no matter what brought us to today, we are not so different at all.
We all get skinned knees and cry. We all have at least one knock-knock joke that makes us laugh. We all hurt and heal and live in frightening uncertainty, though it looks different to everybody. And we can make this world a lot brighter if we’re honest and loving. To make a real difference, we have to listen and start seeing how we are one and the same.
Somaly and I have both found the most intense calm in the rush of a waterfall. We both feel loved when someone sings us a lullaby. While I never had to fend for myself in the woods like her, I do know what it’s like to lose a parent and ache from loneliness.
Minh and I both collect stationery and stickers. Just because Minh’s parents started selling her for sex on a street corner when she was ten years old, while mine fed me chicken soup in a white house with tulips in our garden, doesn’t mean that we are members of different species.
Maria and I have the same favorite dessert: peanut butter milkshakes. Maria earned her GED in prison at the same time I got to perform in the spring play in high school. That doesn’t make either of our educations fuller or more meaningful.
These women didn’t break free from sex trafficking because of any superpowers. They didn’t get to fly away in a rocket ship or on some magic carpet. They made it out because they are and always will be
human
. We all deserve to be treated as humans, not as property. And when nobody was treating them
humanely
, they found a single friend, a mentor, or an inner voice that screamed
I believe in you!
Though the first story comes from a small village with no running water or light bulbs, I hope you’ll still see how Somaly’s hopes, dreams, and fears could be any little girl’s—anywhere in the world. I hope you’ll see how the cycle of human trafficking affects us all, and that to stop it we must believe in one another and in ourselves.
I hope you’ll read these words and believe that we all can and
will
break free.
This is how it starts, by reading one story and seeing how it’s your story, too.
And yours.
And yours.
And mine.
And ours.
“Of course you can’t forget it, but I am sure that you can forgive and turn a page of your life with new light and hope.”
~ Somaly Mam
A Forest Called Home
For Somaly Mam, the most wonderful time was when the rice harvest was done. Many villages in the forests of Cambodia came together then. There was wild dancing and singing around a bonfire so tall it licked the sky. The elders sacrificed a buffalo to the native spirits, and everyone passed around big jugs of rice wine, sipping it through bamboo straws. Somaly loved these harvest celebrations so much. Here she was part of a family. It didn’t matter if it was not her real mother or father or sister or brother. She was a little girl surrounded by people who loved her.
While the singing was winding down, Somaly strung a hammock between two trees. She lay down and watched the bonfire smoke swirl around the moon. She felt like she was floating on everyone’s song. Festival nights were her favorite because she could hear the stars laughing. She knew she was safe in this forest she called home.
Somaly was born in a rural village called Bou Sra around 1970. She never knew the exact month or year. She didn’t even know what her name was then. Her parents left her as a baby when a civil war was breaking out, but the war never came to Bou Sra. It was a quiet pocket of land among the towering trees and the roaring waterfalls of northeastern Cambodia.
In the center of the village was a circle of bamboo huts. Everyone inside those huts looked after one another. Even though Somaly had no roof to call her own, and no one to call her daughter, she knew she would always have food to eat and a floor to sleep on during the rainy season. She didn’t try to figure out
why
her parents abandoned her, or
how
she could have lived a different life if they’d stayed. She couldn’t live in
what if
s or else she would get too sad.