Monday, March 28, 2011
By Kelsey Wells
Staff Writer
A person’s past does not necessarily determine their future, Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam said in a lecture Friday afternoon in the State Farm Room of the Business and Aerospace Building.
As the keynote speaker for the annual Global Discourses in Women’s and Gender Studies conference, Mam discussed how she spent much of her early life as a sex slave but has dedicated the rest of it to helping others escape the abuse and illness she grew up with.
Mam said she was sold in slavery when she was a young teenager by a man posing as her grandfather. Even today, she said she does not know exactly how old she is or who her parents were. She also does not know her real name.
Her owner forced her to live in a snake and scorpion infested brothel with other young slaves, she said.
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