Weak law enforcement, corruption, grinding poverty and the fractured social institutions left by the country's turbulent recent history have helped earn Cambodia an unwelcome reputation for child trafficking, say experts. UNICEF estimates that children account for a third of the 40,, people in the country's sex industry. Svay Pak, a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, is at the heart of this exploitative trade. The residents are mostly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, many of whom live in ramshackle houseboats on the murky Tonle Sap River, eking out a living farming fish in nets tethered to their homes.
It's a precarious existence. The river is fickle, the tarp-covered houseboats fragile. Most families here scrape by on less than a dollar a day, leaving no safety net for when things go wrong — such as when Kieu's father fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, too sick to maintain the nets that contained their livelihood.
The family fell behind on repayments of a debt. In desperation, Kieu's mother, Neoung, sold her virginity to a Cambodian man of "maybe more than 50," who had three children of his own, Kieu says. Don Brewster, a former pastor from California, is the founder and director of Agape International Missions, an organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating the victims of child trafficking in Cambodia and smashing the networks that exploit them.
He moved to Cambodia with his wife in after a harrowing investigative mission trip to the neighborhood. The men who abuse the children of Svay Pak fit a number of profiles. They include pedophile sex tourists, who actively seek out sex with prepubescent children, and more opportunistic "situational" offenders, who take advantage of opportunities in brothels to have sex with adolescents.
Sex tourists tend to hail from affluent countries, including the West, South Korea, Japan and China, but research suggests Cambodian men remain the main exploiters of child prostitutes in their country.
Mark Capaldi is a senior researcher for Ecpat International, an organization committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children. But the majority of sexual exploitation of children is of adolescents, and that's taking place in commercial sex venues.
The abusers would often be local, situational offenders, he says. Research suggests some of the Asian perpetrators are "virginity seekers," for whom health-related beliefs around the supposedly restorative or protective qualities of virgins factor into their interest in child sex. Whatever the profile of the perpetrator, the abuse they inflict on their victims, both girls and boys, is horrific. Trafficked children in Cambodia have been subjected to rape by multiple offenders, filmed performing sex acts and left with physical injuries -- not to mention psychological trauma -- from their ordeals, according to research.
In recent years, various crackdowns in Svay Pak have dented the trade, but also pushed it underground. Today, Brewster says, there are more than a dozen karaoke bars operating as brothels along the road to the neighborhood, where two years ago there was none.
Even today, he estimates a majority of girls in Svay Park are being trafficked. Kieu's relative, Sephak, who lives nearby, is another survivor. CNN is naming the victims in this case at the request of the girls themselves, as they want to speak out against the practice of child sex trafficking.
Sephak was 13 when she was taken to a hospital, issued a certificate confirming her virginity, and delivered to a Chinese man in a Phnom Penh hotel room. She was returned after three nights. I hurt and I felt very weak," she says. I thought about why I was doing this and why my mom did this to me. But in one village in Cambodia, fathers go out of their way to encourage their daughters to have sex: by building them love huts.
Love shack? Attitudes towards sex in some villages in Cambodia remains extremely liberal. Members of the Kreung tribe in the northeast of the country believe that women can be empowered through spending the night with different members of the other sex. And when a girl reaches her early teenage years, or possibly even before, the love hut becomes the place for her to meet and get to know boys before deciding on her one true love.
The tribe believes the ancient practice is the best way for girls to find their future husbands. The Kreung people have, however, moved on from their previous tradition of using a cocktail of alcohol and a centipede as a contraceptive, and now use condoms. When a girl reaches her early teenage years, or possibly even before, the love hut becomes the place for her to meet and get to know boys before deciding on her one true love. But in a country where HIV and AIDS remains prevalent, and where concerns are often raised about the exploitation of youngsters in sex trafficking cases, the idea of encouraging youngsters to have sex so openly remains surprising.
Communities in rural Cambodia continue to live close-knit existences to this day. Nang Chan, a year-old girl who now lives full time in the love hut in the back garden of her parent's house, believes they offer her, and other girls like her, a sense of empowerment, though. Dr Sudeepta Varma, speaking to National Geographic said that from a western perspective, love huts might be regarded as taboo as parents are usually looked upon as 'protectors' of a woman's virginity, and not promoters of it.
After discovering their babies were exchanged at birth, two women develop a plan to adjust to their new lives: creating a single —and peculiar— family. Four months after their babies were swapped, workaholic Ana and student Mariana prepare to carry out the exchange. But what if they don't have to? Mariana moves in with Ana and her family to wean Valentina. Tere, Mariana's mom, is surprised when Juan Carlos, Ana's husband, offers to help them. Pablo, Regina's dad, threatens to sue Mariana.
Ana attends a class to bond with Valentina. Mariana reaches out to Anuar, her estranged dad. Ana and Juan Carlos go to couples therapy. Pablo and Regina go on their first daddy-daughter date. Tere launches her beauty business.
Through this system, photographers could shoot women like Page in the buff, without running up against the laws that technically prevented such pictures from being published.
Famous photographers like Weegee and Gordon Parks frequented the events. He's the one who snapped the never before seen camera club images that appear in the film, and somehow managed to avoid handing his film over to authorities once the venue was raided. Thankfully, Heinlein's images survived as a relic of photography's closed-door past.
Watch the video above for a peek at "Bettie Page Reveals All," directed by filmmaker Mark Mori and narrated by the mysterious Page herself. We'd think we were misinterpreting what we're looking at there, but we actually can't find a photo of these dolls not dressed skankily:. Via Buynbuy-sale. Via chicksontheright. We all know that building real confidence and self-esteem is perhaps the most important thing you can do for your child. There are lots of ways to help them along with this: hugs, rigorous readings of Judy Blume and the occasional bar fight with your kid's enemies' fathers, the trophies of which you leave under your child's pillow to find the next morning.
Daddy's gonna go get a pack of confidence. But take a stroll through Abercrombie and Fitch and you'll find that there is a market for parents who think that the best way to boost the self-esteem of your first-grader is via a bikini top that will enhance her bustline. Via Forthoseabouttoshop. Just kidding!
First, they simply changed the name of it from "push-up" to "padded. Oh, but they made sure they still fit year-olds. Via Dopefiles. Not only is the above thong sold in the goddamn kid's section where you'd expect to find the Spongebob Underoos, but the tiny thong contains the words "Eye Candy" and "Wink, Wink.
Not that they're trying to sexualize your child, or get free publicity by drawing web traffic from pedophiles wink, wink. Via Networkedblogs. Oh, hey, you know what would be great for drowning out all those sudden, uneasy questions about why thongs are being marketed to extremely underage girls? A visit to the cute little kiddie vending machines next to the door on the mad dash out of the mall!
Those machines are just filled with innocent little things you can buy your child, like colorful gumballs, unicorn stickers and those sticky, gummy hands that eventually wind up covered in lint. Fake lower back "tramp stamp" tattoos.
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