A teenager in Cambodia whose virginity was sold to a man when she was a kid has revealed the horrors of the sex trade in her country. Dara Keo, now seventeen, told Marie Claire that she was just twelve years when her mother Rotana, 62, sold her to a wealthy, powerful man, since she was desperate to repay a gambling debt acquired by her late husband.She was forced to give into their demands after her husband’s creditors threatened violence when she could not pay. Her earnings were a meager $1 a day at the time.What followed was indescribable but in no way out of the ordinary in Cambodia, where ancient belief taken from Taoist cultural dictates that a prolonged lifespan can be achieved through sex with virgins.The man who bought Keo was a famous politician in Cambodia, though Keo and her mother declined to make his name public. For one week, she was kept in a hotel room and would visit her twice of thrice a day.Desperate for money, Vannith sold the virginity of her own daughter Chamnan Sok when the girl was just eighteen, and she saw at least fifty young females working at the beer garden give in to the same fate.In spite of the trauma, these young girls certainly went through; they do not show any outward bitterness towards their mothers. Keo says that she only felt sad regarding what happened to her. -
