Donate NowIn this little town on the Burmese border, parents sell their young daughters into sexual slavery for less than the cost of a toaster oven. These little girls, 11 or 12 years old, are forced to serve in brothels and are not permitted to leave.
This has been going on for many years. I know this to be true. I was here before, in 2001.
Back then, brothel agents visited the schools to look over the fourth graders. They offered cash down to parents of 8-year-olds for the right to buy their daughters when they finished the sixth grade.
The agents dressed in business suits and called themselves professors. They told parents they would take their girls to good jobs in the city - nannies, secretaries, etc. - where they could also continue their educations. Instead they were sold to brothels and held captive until they paid off that payment to their parents - the cost of transport and numerous other charges piled on. That could take years.
I interviewed 12-year-old Noie Wongboonma, whose mother had just tried to pull her out of school and put her on the "bus to Bangkok," as everyone here refers to that trip to perdition.
"Sometimes my mother wants to sell me," she said, her head bowed. "I feel very sad that my mother would want to do that. I don't dare argue with her. But I don't want to go where my mother wants to send me."