Duped, Sold into Prostitution, then Rescued: A Vietnamese Girl and the Man Who Saved Her

By ⋅ May 20, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment
Qui and Phong looking northward toward China where they were forcibly taken. (Photo: Phillip Martin)

Qui and Phong looking northward toward China where they were forcibly taken. (Photo: Phillip Martin)

Reporter Phillip Martin has been investigating human trafficking in various parts of the world and in Vietnam he found a glimmer of hope, as a young woman who was kidnapped and sold to a brothel in China, returns to her family.


Discussion

6 comments for “Duped, Sold into Prostitution, then Rescued: A Vietnamese Girl and the Man Who Saved Her”

  • http://twitter.com/timbarrus Tim Barrus

    No one ever talks about — let alone investigates — how boys are part of the sex trafficking universe. Granted, their numbers are only a percentage of the females who are sold into sex slavery. But there are boys sold, too. And many of them have HIV. How do I know this. I teach them in a safe house for exactly such kids. America is not immune from being the destination point of trafficked boys. Mainly, the ones in the US are from Mexico. But to leave them out invites the formation of the stereotype that females are exclusively sexually objectified. So are males. We just don’t want to talk about it.

    • http://twitter.com/phillipWGBH Phillip W.d. Martin

      Tim your comment and observation are almost spot-on. I say almost because many reporters who focus on human trafficking, including me, indeed pay too little attention to the trafficking of boys. But it is part of an upcoming series, and I do reference the problem in Part Four of my series for WGBH titled “Underground Trade”, which looks at one town in Thailand (Pattaya) and the work of the Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Abuse Center in Pattaya. http://www.wgbhnews.org/underground-trade-boston-bangkok —Phillip Martin

      • http://twitter.com/timbarrus Tim Barrus

        I hear you. I applaud any such spotlight. I would also argue that America is in no way immune from the horror of sex trafficking. I have arrived at the conclusion that the boys I deal with will never get beyond it. It’s just too traumatic. It’s PTS in a big way. I love the story of the little girl who asked for help, and in so doing was fighting back. How devastating that she disappeared. The fighting back on the part of rescued children necessarily includes finding a way to hold their lives together without disintegrating. I see it every day. The struggle can eat you alive from the inside out. It cannot be addressed by pretending it doesn’t happen to CHILDREN. That means boys too. Putting the fragmented pieces of their lives back together is a process that I seriously question can be done. It involves a whole lot more than returning the kid to family that may have sold them in the first place. I applaud you for dealing with the issue at all. And I thank you for it.

  • disqus_zMYsOu3VMp

    I am thankful for the work you do bringing light to this subject. It is a widespread and complicated problem that is as old as humanity. My own experiences with trafficking stemmed largely from abuse and addiction and ultimately I made the choice to enter this dark world. I do not want to try and pretend I understand what it is like to be kidnapped and physically imprisoned; however, I do understand that selling one’s body changes a person forever. As much as I hate to say it, I think the idea of foreign, female, forced, child prostitution makes people in the United States “comfortably uncomfortable”. I think the reality of boys being sold, the rampant trafficking problems domestically and the factors that lead one person to buy/sell another can cause paralyzing discomfort. However, it is the “comfortably uncomfortable” stories that raise awareness and raise funding that lead to addressing deeper issues. This subject is my passion, fighting the brokenness that feeds this industry is my purpose, and I am so encouraged today to have heard and read the words of others who are fighting the same battle! The greatest darkness
    is pierced by even the smallest light!

  • http://twitter.com/SchusterInst Schuster Institute

    Glad to see this investigation on PRI! For a huge wealth of additional resources on this story in particular and trafficking in general, please visit our website at http://www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org/ .

  • Disqus_Luan

    I can’t thank you and the Schuster Institute enough for bringing this untold and often time forbidden story, especially coming from Viet-Nam and China, two of the last few countries on earth beside North Korea and Cuba, where the so called “government” “dupes” their people, in the name of communism, into submission, control, slavery like labor, and ultimately trading of young girl and boy bodies for sexual pleasure. Could this have happened rampantly and so regularly without the blind eyes from the government? Of course not! Take any country where basic human right and liberty are valued and respected and you will see the stark different, i.e. South Korea where Gangnam Style is invented to show the irony of basic daily life rather than the basic daily life of human labor and body trading like commodity. The sad hidden part of this story is the many untold similar or worst stories that had and have been going on in these two countries for years. Like the story from a friend of mine who visited the similar region Guangdong, China and ran into a victim in a street market where she described the horrific life of being a wife of one young son in the family, the sex partner to the father and one other brother, and a slave laborer for the entire home. What can we do to help you may ask? One thing I think anyone can do if he/she is living in the U.S. is to write letters to your Congress, Senate, the Secretary of State, and the President asking them to place both China and Vietnam on Human Right Violation Watch list and also Viet-Nam in particular be put back in the list of Countries of Particular Concern: http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/c13281.htm#. This is so the President, the Secretary of State, and the U.S. Congress can take human rights issues into account when making U.S. foreign and trade policy or economy sanction accordingly.

    Phillip, thanks again very much and please use your power to continue bringing these hidden but raw part of those societies to light, perhaps a story from the forbidden brothel in Guangdong, China.