Not for Sale: Khin, 15, trafficked to work in brothel

News
World

Author: Kerre McIvor,
Publish Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2018, 6:18AM

When 15-year-old Khin met a woman in the local market who told her she could get Khin a job singing karaoke in a restaurant, Khin was over the moon.

It was a chance to make good money – $100 a month. That was far more than Khin was getting in her factory job and it was a much more glamorous job too.

Khin loved to sing and the woman knew that. She wasn't a stranger – she was Khin's cousin's aunt – so Khin had seen her around the neighbourhood.

The teenager didn't bother going home to ask her mother's permission to take up the new job – Khin knew her mother would have said no.

But she also knew that when she returned home after the five-month contract, with enough money for the family to live on for a year, all would be forgiven.

It seemed like an offer that was too good to be true. And it was.

After travelling on an overnight bus, Khin and the woman arrived in a city many miles from Yangon. The woman took Khin to a place where there were many other girls staying and bought her new clothes.

Khin said she was excited. She loved the new dresses and couldn't wait to start her new job singing.

But three days later, the owner of the establishment told her what her new job would be.

Men would be coming to visit her and she would have to have sex with them.

A Yangon market place, where Khin lived with her family before being trafficked to a different city. Photo / Mike Scott

Khin was terrified. She begged the owner to let her go but the owner told her she'd been paid for and she'd have to stay.

I asked Khin how long she had to work as a prostitute and at this point in the conversation, she shuts down. Her face sets and her eyes glaze over.

She doesn't remember if it was weeks or months.

She doesn't know how many men she had to sleep with.

She doesn't remember if she talked to them or asked them for help.

This naïve young girl has had to block out her experience to survive the trauma.

Meanwhile, back in Yangon, Khin's mother was fearing the worst. When her daughter failed to arrive home from the market, Wah Wah started asking around. Who had her daughter been seen with? Who did she talk to?

When she realised that Khin had gone off with a woman known in the neighbourhood for travelling a lot and who people suspected was trafficking, Wah Wah feared her daughter had been sent overseas and that she would never see her again.

She cried day and night and had to visit a doctor when she developed a heart complaint. She was literally broken-hearted.

She told the police what had happened, but as she had no idea where her daughter had gone, she didn't have much faith that the police would be able to track down Khin.

Then one night, around 9.30pm in the evening, Wah Wah received a phone call.

Khin had managed to borrow a cellphone and rang her mum, begging her to come and save her.

She knew what town she was in and Wah Wah got on the phone immediately to a child protection team and to her husband's brother, who lived in the same town. Then she and her husband set off to bring their daughter home.

Up until that journey, Wah Wah had never even been across to the other side of Yangon. Travelling beyond her community terrified her.

During the monsoon umbrellas are a ubiquitous sight in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city. Photo / Mike Scott

But she tells me with steely determination that she would have travelled anywhere in the world to rescue her daughter.

Khin in turn had absolute faith that once her mother realised what had happened to her and where she was working, she would move heaven and earth to bring her home.

The child protection unit was galvanised into action, Khin's uncle turned up at the establishment with a social welfare team who informed the police about Khin's abduction and 48 hours after her phone call, Khin was back with her mother.

The woman who sold Khin to the brothel owner was prosecuted by police and sent to prison. Wah Wah said she was determined that the trafficker would be punished for what she had done.

Wah Wah said she's happy to tell her story, despite the pain it brings back talking about her daughter's experience, because she wants to warn young girls that they can't trust anyone.