Just think your 12 years old and your virginity is sold to the highest price, by your family because they see dollar signs in you being a virgin. Your innocence and purity is lost in a matter of minutes and your raped repeatedly over the course of hours or days. You are finally returned home and your family takes you to get your hymen stitched up so they can sell your virginity over and over again. Once your family gets enough use out of you they sell you to a brothel for a higher price, and the money that you rake in from tons of men doing what they want with you helps protect your family and other siblings from the same horrible fate that has been put on you. Boys at a young age are put into dresses and pretty shoes to become a lady boy. All they know growing up is that they are a lady boy, what they don’t know is that they are brought up this way for one thing and one thing only, to work in a brothel. This is reality to many children in Southeast Asia who are poor and brothel owners praying on poor families filling their heads with lies that they are sending their children to a textile factory, but in reality they are sex trafficking their child.
My ministry this month is at a place in Thailand called Remember Nhu. Remember Nhu exists to prevent the exploitation of children in the sex trade industry. They take in children who are at risk of being sold into the sex trade. They are given an education; spiritual, emotional, and physical needs are giving to each child. Right now Remember Nhu in Thailand is busting at the seams, because it’s hard to turn away any child who is in danger of being sold.
With 48 girls in one room the beds are pushed together.
One child was rescued from the market by a worker of Remember Nhu. She goes to the market daily and one day saw this mother with her 15 month old daughter trying to sell her. She brought her to Remember Nhu and “Sarah” is now 2 years old and enjoying a great life that I know she wouldn’t have had if she had gone to anyone else that day. Many of these children have different stories on why they are here. The closest a child at Remember Nhu has been to sex trafficking has been a thing called “seasoning”. The Thai culture is very shy, so the owner of the child or the child’s family will make them sell flowers or something on the streets to get them used to people, so when they get older they won’t be shy when it’s time for them to get into the sex trade.
"Sarah" and I
Sad as their stories are it’s great to see that Remember Nhu has been able to save these children from a horrible future and that they still have their innocence.
