The Women

    Many of the girls sold into brothels are sold by adults either in their families or close friends in exchange for money. Rather than allowing the females in the families to make an economic contribution over time, they are interested in a quick fix to get more money immediately. Srey Neth was fourteen or fifteen when Nicholas Kristof saved her from life in a brothel in Cambodia. He had negotiated with her pimp a price and was permitted to do whatever he wanted with her. However, unlike most customers, Kristof helped free her from her life as a prostitute and brought her back to her village. During their conversations Neth told Kristof that one of her “female cousin[s] had taken [her] from their village, telling [her] family that Neth would be selling fruit in Poipet. Once in Poipet, Neth was sold to the brothel and closely guarded” (Half the Sky 36).  For years Neth lived under the close guard of her brothel owners living more like a slave than a free woman. However, once Nicholas freed Neth from her brothel and returned her to her family and village, he left her with a little money, which she used to start her own grocery cart. Since Nicholas’s heroic action, Neth has been an independent and free woman. Unfortunately, not all girls who are freed from the confines of the brothel can survive in the outside world. Srey Momm, another Cambodian girl freed by Kristof, had grown so dependent on methamphetamines to keep her compliant while working as a prostitute. Once free, she found herself unable to overcome her addiction and venturing back to the brothel in order to get her fix. It is extremely difficult for a young girl to escape from life in a brothel once she is sold into the sex trafficking industry. The lifestyle is comparative to slavery; however, freedom is not impossible to achieve. According to Kristof and WuDunn, “many prostitutes are neither acting freely nor enslaved, but living in a world etched in ambiguities somewhere between those two extremes” (Half the Sky 39). Yet the dependency on drugs in order to carry out one’s job as well as the extreme guard, lends the situations of these young girls to be characterized more often as slavery rather than freedom.