The Road of Lost Innocence: As a girl she was sold into sexual slavery, but now she rescues...

The Road of Lost Innocence: As a girl she was sold into sexual slavery, but now she rescues others. The true ... | Somaly Mam | WOW!!!!!

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The Road of Lost I...

	The Road of Lost Innocence: As a girl she was sold into sexual slavery, but now she rescues others. The true ... Somaly Mam Spiegel & Grau, 2008 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A portion of the proceeds of this book will be donated to the Somaly Mam Foundation.

A riveting, raw, and beautiful memoir of tragedy and hope

Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years old. For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking?rape, torture, deprivation?until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.
Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.

To learn more about how you can help fight human trafficking, visit the foundation?s website: www.somaly.org.

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This woman is amazing

Wow. I want to say there are no words to describe what this book will make you feel, but I'm going to try anyway.
Somaly Mam is the kind of person we all hope we could be, were we faced with the horrors she has lived. Sexual slavery, rape, abuse - she survived all these and has been brave enough to share her story with us. She recounts her experiences in a raw, unflinching tone, experiences which could break the strongest of us. And although Somaly escaped her own dark path, she has never left that world behind, but instead returns time and again to rescue other girls trapped in brothels, girls sometimes as young as four or five, girls who have been sold into sexual slavery.
Her story is amazing, the world she describes is horrifying, and in the end if you have not been moved to tears, then you are not human.
But this book is not just intended as a voyeuristic window into a world we should condemn. It is a necessary education for those of us who are lucky enough to live in a world where sexual slavery is a remote problem. And if, like me, you finish the book and find yourself enraged at what is being done, then you might do what I did and google her name, and find her foundation's website: www.somaly.org. There is something we can all do to help, and after reading this book you just might need to.

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WOW!!!!!

"The Road to Lost Innocence" by Somaly Mam touched me so deeply that I must recommend this novel! Her writing style is simple and easy to grasp, allowing the reader to become so engrossed in this tragic and compelling story. She brings Cambodia to life through its interesting foods, fascinating customs and graphic description of the ethnic separation of the people. Through her words, I have sampled the region's oppression under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Her descriptions of the horrors of being torn away from everything familiar at the age of 9 or 10 by a stranger that promised to reunite Somaly with her parents were tempered by shining moments of kindness and hope in the midst of this tragic existence, revealing God's care and provision.

This book takes you through the tragedy that was Somaly's life to where she escaped and now rescues others. It made me smile. It made me weep. It made me angry. It made me think of (and pray for) all the people trapped in the sex slavery trade. It made me realize that I don't have a care in the world compared to those who are victimized by this very real horror everyday. It made me want to make a difference. I pray it makes you want to change the world, too.

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Devastating story of a woman's rise from a life of abuse to rescue others

The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam is a heart-breaking story of a woman's fight out of slavery and her quest to save others from suffering as she did. Somaly was raised in the forests of Cambodia in a primitive tribe without electricity or running water. Living in the remote jungles, her parents abandoned her and left her with a grandmother who then died before Somaly could remember any of them. She raised herself until the age of eleven, sleeping in a hammock, fishing for some meals, and receiving some little care from the rest of the villagers. At eleven, a man claiming to be her grandfather took her to a larger city and used her as slave labor, beating her and forcing her to work for others as well. She learned how to read at a small school run by a man who claimed to be her uncle and tried to do his weak best by her. At fifteen, her grandfather sold her into a violent marriage with a soldier, until he disappeared, and the grandfather appeared again to sell her into a brothel in Phnom Phen. There Somaly was raped and beaten until all of her will was driven out of her, and the fight to survive overcame the desire to be free. Eventually a French aid worker came to her aid, and Somaly was able to break free of this devastating life. But Somaly is more than the average women. She was unwilling to let other women suffer as she did, so she began distributing condoms to the brothels, and then opened a home to take in girls who fled their life of forced prostitution. She has faced threats, including the kidnapping of one of her daughters, but has emerged unwilling to bend again. Her story is amazing and awful, not something that is easily considered. It's much easier to skim over the details and refuse to internalize them. But when I read about men raping 5 and 6 year old girls and then pimps sewing the girls up again so they can be sold as "virgins", and then look at my own 5-1/2 year old daughter, my heart is broken. I can't imagine the degradation that these girls suffer daily. Somaly tells her story in raw, harsh words. They are not prettied up, nor does she gloss over what she has faced. This book needs to be read to expose the world to the truths about what is going on in Cambodia to these young girls. A portion of the profits from this book go to Somaly's charity that helps free girls from their abuse, and I know that her foundation is one that I will be donating to in the future.

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You Will Want to Do Something

I can NOT imagine anyone finishing this book, putting it down, and moving on in life without reacting practically. Without helping with at least a token monetary effort to improve the world described in these pages. The unflinching manner in which Mam relates the stories of sexually enslaved Cambodian women and children simply smacks you in the face.

Mam suggests an explanation for why Cambodia has reached such a point of moral deterioration. "Three decades of bombing, genocide, and starvation and now my country is in a state of moral bankruptcy. . . . During the Khmer Rouge regime people detached themselves from any kind of human feeling, because feeling meant pain. . . . To avoid going mad, they shrank to the smallest part of a human, which is 'me.'"

Read this book and you will step outside that smallest part of a human. You will want to help. That, in itself, is an excellent reason for Mam's having written her story.

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A HUMAN HORROR STORY

"The Road of Lost Innocence" by Somaly Mam starts out reminding me of the novel, "Green Mansions" by W. H. Hudson. A deep forest that hides the innocence and beauty of a young girl. In the book, "Green Mansions" the forest protected "Rima" (the bird girl). In "The Road of Lost Innocence" the forest surrounds and devours Somaly Mam.

The fairytale forest world in Cambodia soon becomes a "hunting ground" for abominable acts of perversion, and genocide. Author, Somaly Mam becomes one of many young victims taken and sold into the dark alleyways of rape and child prostitution. She finds herself caught in a filthy and despicable "hell on earth." Somaly was actually sold into this diabolical world by family members in an effort to make money and "pay off debts" that ... "they" had incurred.

Ms. Mam realistically acknowledges that in Cambodia (as well as numerous other Asian countries i.e.: Vietnam, Thailand, etc), parents, and other family members are void of any feelings have to do with guilt, because their children are their property, and basically; "money on legs, an asset, a kind of domestic livestock."

Somaly Mam spends numerous years as a prostitute in this ugly world and is repeatedly raped, beaten, and tortured throughout her tenure. Despite her sad fate, she eventually brakes out of this "bubble world" through the assistance of several European clients. With their help, Somaly educates herself, tempers her tenacious spirit, and returns to the gutters of Cambodia with a mission of saving others who suffered the same fate.

In that process, Somaly and her French husband founded AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Situations). This organization along with the newly formed "Somaly Mam Foundation" has continued to help thousands of young victims reintegrate into society as useful and healthy individuals. Ms. Mam is in my mind, a younger Asian version of Mother Teresa.

Most of the actual writing itself is in a direct straightforward and no nonsensical format. However, I felt a great deal of her story line and character application was redundant throughout the book. None the less, this is not a fairytale you would want to read to your children. This is a true and unequivocal horror story that will not easily fade from your mind or... your aching heart.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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