When teenage girl P* was offered a job making coffee in Cambodia’s capital city, she jumped at the chance to escape her poverty-stricken home life. But the job turned out to be forced prostitution and the pay about $2 an hour.

When P* speaks, her voice is barely a whisper.

She stares into her lap as she mouths each word and her feet shift from side to side under the table.

The 20-year-old Cambodian woman, who does not want to be identified, was just 17 when a man came to her village and offered her a job making coffee in the capital.

Caring for her ageing parents in a poor provincial area, she saw the job as a lifeline.

But when she arrived in Phnom Penh there was no coffee job. Instead she was forced into sex work in a brothel, servicing up to 10 men a day for about $2 an hour.

She was forced to pay for her own food, clothes and accommodation, and any money she had left over she would send home.

Three years after being rescued by police, she is now working as a hairdresser and is living with friends. With the help of an interpreter she says that working at the salon has given her the chance to do what she loves after a traumatic start to adulthood.

"I like makeup and hair," she says quietly. "And making people beautiful."

P is one of many Cambodians to fall victim to human trafficking, a crime also common in neighbouring countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

Human trafficking - often confused with people smuggling - is when a person is kept in an exploitative situation such as child labour, sexual work or domestic servitude under the threat of force of some other form of coercion. Traffickers often tell their victims that they owe a debt, or make threats against their family, to keep them working.

John Whan Yoon, Regional Program Manager of World Vision East Asia's End Trafficking in Persons (ETIP) Program, says there is a common misconception that trafficking affects only women and children but men too can be victims.

The 2014 United Nations Global Report on Trafficking in Persons showed that in Southeast Asia and the Pacific 23 per cent of trafficking victims between 2010 and 2012 were men. In Europe and central Asia, men made up 69 per cent of trafficking victims.

Despite this, some early anti-trafficking laws included only women and children, and men were excluded from the definition of trafficking itself.

Mr Yoon says another common misconception is that most trafficking cases involve sex work.

The UN report shows that in Southeast Asia between 2010 and 2012, sexual exploitation made up 26 per cent of trafficking cases, and cases of forced labour 64 per cent.

Many poor people in Cambodia cross the border to Thailand in search of work, making them vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking.

Mother-of-eight Mao Yeut (pictured below) tells me her 16-year-old daughter left for Thailand a month ago to make money for the family. Her 27-year-old daughter is also there.

Speaking through an interpreter, she says the family had few options.

"It’s not a good thing but because I'm poor I have to send my daughters to go and find work over there."

She says she's never been to Thailand herself but has.......

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015 ... -beautiful

I think we have heard this story before.. hello Somaly Mom. are you back in business again.

15 or 20 years ago this practice was relatively prevalent but today it is a bit of a stretch. That is not saying it could not happen.

picooie

another poor woman deprived of her 20$/day job and enslaved in a 3$/day servitude as hairdresser .... nuff of this stuff

She only" worked " a few imaginary days. Read again and do the maths.

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I just closely read the article and a couple of things stand out. One, World Vision is mentioned squarely in this article. World Vision enough said. Two, if she lived in the floating village at Kampong Chhnang she is Vietnamese. Viets are notorious for selling their own kind. She was probably working in a Viet coffee shop that was a part time knock shop. If she did not want to be a hooker and be a hairdresser good for her. The problem I have is this story is the exception not the rule. I seriously doubt she was being held against her own will. But that kind of story line is great for fund raising with naive born again Christians in the USA.

picooie

I think there's reason to be skeptical, but I find the joy people seem to take in calling her a liar a little disconcerting. We just don't know. If she actually went through even a day of forced prostitution, she deserves our sympathies. If she's lying, that sucks, but I'm not personally comfortable attacking her and I'm disappointed that so many are with so few details to go on.

Two bucks an hour..........if she worked 10 hours a day, is 600.00 a month.

Wonder how she is enjoying 1/6th of that.