Mein on the day of her rescue from a Siem Reap brothel.

Mein is the oldest child in her family and she felt the burden of her family’s survival was hers to bear. She lived with her family in a Vietnamese community named Svay Pak just outside the capitol city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Svay Pak was and still is infamous for the sexual trafficking of girls, some as a young as five years old. Her family was living in abject poverty. “I saw the terrible situation of my family and I could not stand it; we were so poor…Everyday creditors would knock on our door and ask my mother to pay back the loans she had taken out to support our family, but we had no money to pay them back. My father was an alcoholic. He beat my mother and neglected my my younger brothers. He drank our family into debt. I could not stand to watch my mother cry. I decided to sell myself to the brothel. It was a hard decision. I was fourteen at the time.

She was held captive in a small wooden house across the street from the brothel in Svay Pak. ” When I first went to the brothel I felt scared. The brothel owner waited until she could find a foreign man who would pay a high price to have sex with me, since I was a virgin. When they found a foreigner to pay the high price they settled me in the small pink room [the virgin room] located on the second floor.” This was room reserved for the rape and torture of young innocents. After her virginity and innocence were brutally stolen from her, her value became less and less with each purchase of her body. Her body was used as brutally as the buyer pleased. As this violence was heaped upon her, Mein would wonder how could such unthinkable, unspeakable things could be happening to her. She was raped and sexually tortured from 5 PM to 5 AM for six months. From 5AM to 5PM she was locked in the wooden structure across the street.

After she had been there six months a raid led by the International Justice Mission (IJM) was conducted on the brothel to rescue the children held there. Believing the lies of the brothel owner regarding the anti-trafficking police, she hid and was not rescued. She believed it was too dangerous and risky to stay in Svay Pak, so she migrated from brothel to brothel over the next six years. She felt such great despair; she was made to feel like an animal, lowly with no value. But felt she had no other recourse. She was hopeless. “I felt bored with life. I felt I didn’t want to do this anymore. But what else could I do? I didn’t have a skill and my family still depended on the money I sent to them.”

In 2006 everything changed when IJM discovered Mein in a Siem Reap brothel and she was sent to Agape Restoration Center (ARC). Through the power of Jesus unconditional love flowing through the ARC staff and programs she began to have hope and dreams for a new future. “At that time my life changed from bad to good. In the past I never had an education. Now I go to classes. I am specializing in tailoring. It is my dream to open a tailoring shop—not a big shop but by my home—so I can make money for my family.”

During Mein’s stay at ARC the organization start to rent the very same Svay Pak brothel Mein was first trafficked. It was closed down after that raid Mein hid from in 2003. ARC has converted into a community center offering free classes, activities, and healthcare for children and adults in Svay Pak. The vision is to transform the community through Christ-like acts of love. The center is called Rahab’s House. Today Mein and other girls from ARC volunteer at Rahab’s House teaching classes and sharing Jesus’ love to dozens of at risk children. “For my first time to Rahab’s House, when the van stopped, I felt so scared to get out. But when I got out it was good. I saw that everything had changed. Before when I was here I was a sex-worker. Now when I go to teach the children, I feel like I am staff. I am proud of this.”

Mein studied very hard on her language and math skills to become functionally literate. She prayed and worked through her counseling sessions to finally realize her value and worth in Christ. She is attending a tailoring school in Phnom Penh. She has been safely re-integrated to her family, and both she and her family are supported by ARC as she completes tailoring school. As soon as she has completed tailoring school, ARC will help her set up her tailor shop so she can help provide for herself and the family she so dearly loves.

There’s a beautiful brightness in her smile. Not because her past has been erased, but because she realizes that her true value, her value as a child of God is not diminished by what has been done to her. “I want all girls to know the way that I worked in the past. I want them to know the brothel is not a good choice. When I worked there people looked down on me, I do not want this to happen to them. I will tell them: Choose a good way. I thank God for my new life!”

Mein at reintegration with one of her creations