Thailand's Brothel Busters

Plying the world's oldest trade in Bangkok.

News: A U.S.-based group is spurring high-profile raids to free sex workers. But what happens when the women don't want to be saved?

By Maggie Jones

November/December 2003 Issue

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Innocence for Sale

RE:ACTION

International Justice Mission

From the outside, the Pink Lady in Chiang Mai, Thailand, had all the markings of a brothel: the bodyguard stationed at the front door, the blackened windows, the motorcycles parked out front late at night. Inside, it looked like a cheap diner, with frayed vinyl booths and tables. Flashing Christmas lights hung from the bar. The stereo played Thai pop music.

Several times in 2001, investigators with an American organization called International Justice Mission (IJM) -- a religious group staffed by Christian lawyers -- paid undercover visits to the Pink Lady. The group -- usually two to three men -- would order rounds of Heinekens and talk with as many girls as possible, recording the conversations with a hidden camera. Eventually they compiled a 25-page report that included photographs, addresses, and excerpts from Thailand's penal code -- which outlaws brothels -- and presented it to the country's Department of Public Welfare. A week later, police descended on two brothels and two nearby houses and rounded up 43 women and girls.

To IJM, it was a successful "rescue" mission, one of dozens that it and other organizations have undertaken in Thailand, India, Cambodia, and other countries. On IJM's website and in its fundraising brochures, these rescues are advertised as effective ways to help girls and women who have been trafficked across borders and forced into prostitution. But despite IJM's lofty goal -- to gather evidence that will lead to prosecutions of brothel owners and free their victims -- the raids don't often net the big players or lead to significant jail time for traffickers.

And then there's the sticky problem of whether some of the women even want to be rescued at all. One organization in India, known as STOP (Stop Trafficking, Oppression, and Prostitution), has been criticized for "saving" women against their will. And an NGO worker complained last year in the Kathmandu Post that a group of Nepalese women had to bribe rescuers to let them stay in their brothels. "I've never seen an issue where there is less interest in hearing from those who are most affected by it," notes Phil Marshall, manager of the United Nations' Project on Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia's Mekong region.

In the days following the Pink Lady raid, the rescued women and girls were locked into two rooms of an orphanage by Public Welfare authorities, and many of them hardly seemed relieved. While some told of having been promised waitressing jobs and then being forced into the brothel, others had chosen to work there, and several complained that they had not yet been ready to leave. "We need to make money for our families," one woman cried. "How can you do this to us?"

During the one hour each day when they were allowed outside the building, four girls soon slipped out the front gate and disappeared. A few nights later, 11 of them strung together sheets, shimmied down the second-floor window of the orphanage, and climbed over a concrete and wire fence. Nine more ran away weeks later. During one of the escape attempts, a woman fell from a second-story window and was hospitalized with back injuries.

Some of the women felt there was no longer a life for them outside prostitution -- that brothel life had ruined them. Others saw the brothel as their only hope to earn money. Some of the escapees were clearly trying to return to Burma, a daunting and dangerous journey, and more than a few, social workers believe, were heading back to the brothels. Within one month following the raid, a total of 24 girls and women had run away from being saved.

You won't find these complications featured in IJM's literature, or in the group's media appearances. Nor were they discussed in congressional testimony during debates over the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, passed in 2000 and widely considered the key element in the U.S. government's new war on global sex trafficking. In addition to providing funding for anti-trafficking initiatives, the legislation gives Congress power to impose sanctions on countries that don't aggressively tackle the problem. According to human-rights groups, as many as 250,000 women and children are caught up in Southeast Asian sex traffic every year. As countries such as Thailand, India, and Nepal try to convince the United States that they are addressing trafficking, brothel raids are likely to increase.

IJM won't say how many women they've helped rescue or what happened to them afterward. Sharon Cohn, IJM's director of anti-trafficking operations, says her organization targets only women who are smuggled across borders or coerced. IJM director Gary Haugen says he's never met a prostitute who's been upset about being rescued. "All the conversations I've had have been with victims who expressed how grateful they were to be released from a place of horrific abuse."

But that doesn't mean others aren't caught in the raids -- or that all trafficked women necessarily want to be rescued. Burmese migrants, for example, rely on traffickers to flee to Thailand, and into the sex trade, because they have few opportunities to support their families at home, where they'd live in fear of gang rape and forced labor. One 19-year-old Burmese sex worker told me she could have found work in Thailand as a domestic, but she'd heard stories of girls who weren't paid or were beaten by their employers. (In one recent case, a Burmese domestic worker in Thailand died after her employer set her on fire and left her without food, water, or medical care for three days.) "Some women, particularly those with families to support, see brothels as their best option," says Marshall. "And given their other choices, I think this is understandable."

During a recent anti-trafficking conference in Hawaii, experts and human-rights advocates called for a list of "best practices" for raids and rescues -- including more attention to who does and doesn't want to be taken from brothels. IJM officials say they have been working to coordinate their investigative work with other organizations and the Thai government, to make sure women receive "aftercare" following the raids. But clearly, the spectacular busts won't stop anytime soon -- and neither will the flow of women and girls into brothels. "If it were your 12-year-old daughter in the brothel, you'd want the raid," says Marshall. "But you also have to acknowledge that it's someone else's daughter that might end up in the brothel because your daughter got out. Raids don't necessarily address the roots of the problem and can actually make things worse if they are not done right."

Several months ago, Cambodian officials working with IJM -- and with Dateline NBC cameras rolling -- raided a brothel in Svay Pak, a notorious shantytown outside Phnom Penh. Thirty-seven girls and young women were taken from the brothel and placed in a shelter. One was only five years old; several girls were under 10. But after the TV cameras were turned off and IJM had left the country, six women, thought to be about 18 or 19 years old, climbed over the fence at the shelter and ran away. Local aid workers believe that the girls, who were illegal migrants with few places to go, returned to a brothel. And a new group of children is expected to arrive in Svay Pak's brothels before long.

Maggie Jones was a Pew Fellow in International Journalism while reporting this story.

Photo: AP/Wide World Photos

Comments:

We publish a magazine which is free of charge to organizations and individuals in developing countries. The next issues deals with HIV prevention in brothels and we are looking for photographs to place alongside this article. I would be grateful if you could provide us with digital photographs for this article. I look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards Dorothy Timmerman Secretary

Posted by:Dorothy TimmermanJune 14, 2007 4:55:21 AMRespond ^

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Posted by:KamranJune 29, 2007 4:03:27 AMRespond ^

Wow, IJM are ineffective and horrible people..some of the girls ran away maybe even back to the brothels! What about the few that didn't? Their lives have been redeemed and they have a new chance to live without being sexual abused... Shame on IJJM for not addressing the bigger need...they clearly accomplished nothing.

Posted by:to the authorAugust 3, 2007 2:54:56 PMRespond ^

It is not about shame on anyone. It is about seeing the problem from all sides and doing the best to acknowledge and address them. And the rescue organizations in the West too often ignore the other side. Why can't the follow-up procedures after the raids include letting the women who choose to stay in the industry go back? Some such one-sided actions of the US increased rather than decreased the suffering of women in prostitution because the support services that existed for them before were eliminated.

Posted by:IngaOctober 26, 2007 2:55:32 AMRespond ^

If the girls are forced into bars how come so many live out, in thier own condo, turn up for work on thier own and go home when they want...I havenever met any girl who could not leave on her own free will....and never met any girl qwho really disliked working in a music bar, gets drinks bought for her and had a big sex life and gets paid for it....at the end of the day the girls can choos to go with the man or choose not to go with the man...... In one case I know that 2 undercover Australian cops were trying to find underage girls..they aske in every bar if they has children fo sex.....this actually created a market as they didnt show ID or cop badges...the barowners thought that they really did want underage girls and now they are available.... But,...you always see underage girls pregnant, with children, from thier own village...so whos haxing sex with them..possiboly thier own family or families friend.......

Posted by:JohnNovember 2, 2007 8:41:48 PMRespond ^

..exactly.....why round up the girls...get the owners.....now the girls dont have a job...

Posted by:johnNovember 2, 2007 8:43:59 PMRespond ^

هلا وسهلا ومرحبا ممكن نتعرف عليكم يا فرسان هادا الشات على المسنجر mag_ed_2008@hotmail.com

Posted by:الشبJanuary 30, 2008 5:39:25 AMRespond ^

I think in-depth attention should ALWAYS be paid to those pointing the finger of blame, no matter what the accusation, but especially in matters of sexual morality. Employment by organisations such as IJM attracts sexual predators for their own under the pretence of having a legitimate reason for being there in the first place. After all, they are given the details and the go-ahead to officially go to these places. They then point at others to cover their own guilt. Of how many cases do we all know of paedophiles with positions of authority in children's homes, schools and churches, all over the world? Many Catholic orphanages, it has been revealed on many occasions, were/are staffed entirely by child abusers. The guilt of US American Evangelists in Northern Thailand, volunteering to 'educate' the ignorant masses to the word of their god, eventually causing them to point the finger at the brothels that cater for paedophiles, only then having the victim's identify them as previous clients. Now that the problem is largely eradicated in Thailand we see that they are transferring their evangelistic attention to other SE Asian countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, where paedophilia is still widely practiced. We hear of police and politicians who work and campaign to stamp out the atrocities and remove the evil ones from society, only later to hear that many of them have been caught red-handed committing the crimes they have 'publicly' been working to expose.
I could never trust a finger-pointer, any more than a politician, without great reassurance of their true motivation. These organisations should largely be run and staffed by women, and where it is necessary for men to be employed they should be subjected to strong supervision and psychological investigation. Men should never have the opportunity to even get close to those vulnerable, naive & poorly educated victims of their own ignorance. And, yes, by imposing hypocritical western standards on developing cultures they are removing what the sex-workers themselves see as a legitimate and justifiable means of employment that will feed and clothe their entire family. Hell, tourism in Thailand has grown from the sex industry and I'm sure that if the accusers were given polygraph tests regarding their personal involvement, very few, if any, would pass as innocent.

Posted by:JoJoRazMarch 7, 2008 9:11:08 PMRespond ^

Correction: The second sentence should read:
Employment by organisations such as IJM attracts sexual predators for their own deviant puposes under the pretence of having a legitimate reason for being there in the first place.

Posted by:JoJoRazMarch 7, 2008 9:16:55 PMRespond ^

these girls are usually beaten for days, raped, and brainwashed into submission and told that their only life is in prostitution. the orphanage model is being outmoded currently in favor of more suitable living and transitioning care facilities. the reason they run back is because they have no other hope, that is why many organizations like Transitions Cambodia are training the girls in vocational work that has a future like I T tech opposed to sewing. this article is horribly short sighted and pure muck raking journalism. get a life Mother Jones and research a little better before you post articles with no credible references, Wikipedia would even be better than this one sided crap.

Posted by:hope sickMay 27, 2008 1:16:39 AMRespond ^

IM SO SAD HOW WOMEN'S UNFORTUANTE LIVES ARE...I WISH I COULD BUILD A LARGE FACILITIY FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN...WHERE THEY CAN WORK, EARN INCOME, LEARN WHILE THEY WORK... HAVE EQUAL OPPURTUNITY USING THEIR MINDS AND NOT THEIR BODIES...I WISH THESE WOMEN CAN HAVE THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS...LIKE WOMEN DO IN THE U.S...

Posted by:shae vuJune 24, 2008 9:26:47 PMRespond ^

Be fair, JoJoRaz. It's not as though IJM has *only* helped women. They've helped men as well, so the idea that it should be staffed by women because it deals with women only is a fallacious argument.

That said, the not-so-subtle implication in your post painting the male sex as predatory in nature doesn't do anyone any favors.

Posted by:RevJuly 13, 2008 3:00:52 PMRespond ^

Sorry if this comes across as sarcastic. I am a little flustered after reading this article (I realized in re-reading this post), but I hope it captures my passion about this subject:

Overall, this is a weak article that quite fully misses the point on why these organizations exist.

I'm pretty sure IJM is standing up for these girls because they don't have a voice of their own. Most girls in the brothel wouldn't be in that profession by their own volition. The profession as a whole is degrading, and sure, they may be there because they nobly value their family's well-being more than their bodies.

But honestly? Let's talk about girls that "want" to prostitute themselves for the sake of their families. Should we also allow drug dealers to deal heroine and cocaine because they want to feed their families? What if these drug dealers just "enjoy" drug-dealing?

Lastly, how's this for a question? Next time there's a Katrina disaster or tsunami, why don't we let people die instead of rescuing? Who knows? They might not wanna be rescued. They might have wanted to commit suicide or die.

Please think about your logic here...

Posted by:pippenJuly 13, 2008 8:36:08 PMRespond ^

Regardless of personal opinions, a law is a law. In countries where IJM operates and helps local officials perform raids on brothels, the law is being broken. Having sex with minors in these countries is illegal, and that law should be enforced.

When considering whether these girls or women want to be in the brothels in the first place, one must first consider whether it is even legal and if the woman is of age. One must also consider the psychological state these women and young girls are in. Many do not realize that there are other options out there for them. Many also have been abused verbally, as well as physically and sexually, and can begin to believe that they truly are worthless or ruined and have no options or future outside of the sex trade.
One cannot rely on the judgment of a twelve-year-old girl who has been sexually, physically, and probably verbally abused on whether or not she wants to leave a brothel.

Regardless, International Justice Mission is not conducting the raids on their own where they think women and girls "want" to be freed. They work with local, in-country authorities to enforce laws that are already in existence in that country.

A law is a law. Would you suggest that these laws against the rape of minors and prostitution go un-enforced?

Posted by:SusanAugust 19, 2008 7:38:45 PMRespond ^

You can,t say the law is law, follow it right or wrong, that means we are sheep with no voice to stand up for what is right and just by our own judgement. If history has taught us anything its that the will of the people will eventually make change. Prostition is the worlds oldest trade, whether for or influence, its rife and in your face when poverty drives the necessatity. Solve the economics, difficult as most of the world needs support. Say prosecute westeners with all vigour and you won,t hardly impact the abuse, most is internal. That doesn,t mean we shouldn,t try. But perhaps focus limited resources where they best fit. The comments on bar girls pat pong or soy cowboy bankok doesn,t apply, things are brutal in the sticks, and there is local trade culture ingrained. Its not western custom and prices, right or wrong as that might be.Its education and funding that solves the issue, and half the world needs that, but you wont eradicate prostitution just lessen the more shocking abuse that abject poverty creates. You know as race we aren,t by nature kind and fair, we need that shown to us. When a free and relatively well treated to this artical which is up north, bar girl, befriends and convinces a lonely guy that he has found love and takes him to the cleaners, thats life. I guess we can,t solve world, but if we put resources into something where we haven,t enough to tackle the core it should be pragmatic to pay off in returns rather than make a philosophical statement that all should be saved even the ones that don,t want to be saved, they really do given re/education and time. As a say 19 year old, just about supporting a family after i am robbed by the pimps why would i stop working if you can,t really deliver income on the same level. As for HIV you have to educate to the dangers but also remove the poverty gap, if i offer double or triple the price, and the need and even the knowledge is there people gamble by necessatity. Forgive the spelling I am dyslexic.

Posted by:AJSeptember 6, 2008 7:12:41 AMRespond ^

I mean prostitution is actually illegal in Thailand since 1960 whatever age, so there no considerring of age to be done from the law, if the law is the law, we should stop that. But may be personal judgement would say, with what we have as funding lets tackle what feels the most in need of help. Don,t follow the law, but our judgement, save the children first. Its also easy to talk other options, do you know they exist for all, i have seen rural thailand, burma and laos, its tough, but a couple weeks doesn,t give me the right or the knowledge to comment. And i haven,t seen Dafur which probably has more shocking abuses.

Posted by:AJSeptember 6, 2008 7:35:03 AMRespond ^

This article makes some interesting points, and it could have been improved with some reporting on IJM's Social Work efforts-- which would presumably involve counseling for victims? Are these effective? How do they compare to efforts in this country to aid victims of domestic violence or child abuse? There are very few organizations that present self-criticism publicly, but a journalistic piece that purports to be more than a one-sided attack might do a better job at presenting the "other side to the other side."

Posted by:Brian CooperOctober 1, 2008 7:04:11 PMRespond ^

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