Wednesday
Apr272011
"Red Light" puts sexual slavery on display
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 11:34AM
By Rachel Curtis, Development Manager
This Thursday, LO’s executive director, Erika Keaveney, will present the horrors of child sexploitation and trafficking to the national chapter of Dining for Women, a philanthropic group that has selected our Consoling Through Counseling aftercare project as their featured initiative for April. Pictures will be powerful, and there is no shortage of statistics to convey the shocking reality faced by beneficiaries at our safe shelter in Sisophon, Cambodia: there are an estimated 100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia, 70,000 of whom were forced into the trade. Worse still, 40,000 of them are less than 16 years old.
While these figures send chills down one’s spine, short of traveling to Cambodia the grim universe to which these women and girls belong may still feel remote. This May and June, those who wish to get closer to the gritty realm of sexual slavery can do so via a heart-wrenching documentary called Red Light, which will be aired on Showtime.
Narrated by actress Lucy Liu, Red Light was filmed over the course of four years and follows two Nobel Peace Prize nominees, and several child slaves they hope to help. Cambodian parliament member Mu Sochua and former sex slave Somaly Mam navigate the treacherous innards of a country still reeling from the trauma of genocide, of a collective psyche that is battered and self-destructive. First-hand accounts of abuse and coercion are supplemented with footage smuggled from inside brothels, where young girls wear numbers and are shuffled before customers like cattle.
It is a long and heavy 72 minutes. But the bravery and indignation of girls like Srey Peuv, whose mother sold her to a brothel at the age of eight, and Reena, who rescued her younger sister from forced prostitution and marched relentlessly until she had - against all odds – the perpetrators put behind bars, are blinding points of light in the darkness.
These bright spots are the force behind Lotus Outreach. It is their courage and tenacity which inspire us to venture into the harshest, most desperate places we can find, knowing there is always something beautiful that can bloom from within.
Girls at our safe shelter in Sisophon
This Thursday, LO’s executive director, Erika Keaveney, will present the horrors of child sexploitation and trafficking to the national chapter of Dining for Women, a philanthropic group that has selected our Consoling Through Counseling aftercare project as their featured initiative for April. Pictures will be powerful, and there is no shortage of statistics to convey the shocking reality faced by beneficiaries at our safe shelter in Sisophon, Cambodia: there are an estimated 100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia, 70,000 of whom were forced into the trade. Worse still, 40,000 of them are less than 16 years old.
While these figures send chills down one’s spine, short of traveling to Cambodia the grim universe to which these women and girls belong may still feel remote. This May and June, those who wish to get closer to the gritty realm of sexual slavery can do so via a heart-wrenching documentary called Red Light, which will be aired on Showtime.
Narrated by actress Lucy Liu, Red Light was filmed over the course of four years and follows two Nobel Peace Prize nominees, and several child slaves they hope to help. Cambodian parliament member Mu Sochua and former sex slave Somaly Mam navigate the treacherous innards of a country still reeling from the trauma of genocide, of a collective psyche that is battered and self-destructive. First-hand accounts of abuse and coercion are supplemented with footage smuggled from inside brothels, where young girls wear numbers and are shuffled before customers like cattle.
It is a long and heavy 72 minutes. But the bravery and indignation of girls like Srey Peuv, whose mother sold her to a brothel at the age of eight, and Reena, who rescued her younger sister from forced prostitution and marched relentlessly until she had - against all odds – the perpetrators put behind bars, are blinding points of light in the darkness.
These bright spots are the force behind Lotus Outreach. It is their courage and tenacity which inspire us to venture into the harshest, most desperate places we can find, knowing there is always something beautiful that can bloom from within.
Girls at our safe shelter in Sisophon
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