Somaly Mam ( ; born 1970/71) is a Cambodian anti-trafficking advocate who focuses primarily on sex trafficking. From 1996 to 2014, Mam was involved in campaigns against sex trafficking. She set up the Somaly Mam Foundation, raised money, appeared on major television programs, and spoke at many international events.
After allegations of lying had appeared in The Cambodia Daily in 2012 and 2013, Newsweek ran a cover-story in May 2014 claiming that Mam had fabricated stories of abuse about herself and others. After the Somaly Mam Foundation undertook its own investigation through Goodwin Procter, a Boston-based law firm, she resigned from her position and the foundation shut down in October 2014. She moved back to live in Cambodia before returning to the US later that year to begin new fundraising activities.
Early life
Mam was born to a tribal minority family in Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia. In her memoir, The Road of Lost Innocence, she states that she was born in either 1970, or 1971.
Mam was investigated by a journalist working in Cambodia, and his allegations that key parts of her early life were false was carried by Newsweek in May 2014. Mam resigned from the Somaly Mam Foundation shortly thereafter. An investigation by Marie Claire magazine came to a different conclusion, finding witnesses that supported Mam's story and contradicted Newsweek's allegations.
In her book Mam said she attended school in Cambodia, but did not graduate. According to the Newsweek article, Mam did graduate and found two students and a teacher to support their claims, but Marie Claire quotes the school director remembering she attended only three years of school.
Mam said that she was abused by her "grandfather" until she was approximately 14 and that she was sold to a brothel and forced into prostitution and that she was also forced to marry a stranger. She has claimed that she was forced to prostitute herself on the streets and made to have sex with five or six clients per day.
Mam left Cambodia for Paris in 1993 where she married a French citizen, Pierre Legros. They divorced in 2008.
Charity and achievements
Mam served as an untrained healthcare worker with Médecins Sans Frontières and, in her spare time, handed out condoms, soap, and information to women in the brothels. In 1996, she co-founded AFESIP (Agir pour les Femmes en Situation Precaire or "Acting for Women in Distressing Situations"), a Cambodian NGO dedicated to rescuing, housing and rehabilitating women and children in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam who have been sexually exploited. AFESIP conducts outreach work to try helping the women still enslaved. The organization also works with law enforcement to raid the brothels. The company has locations in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
In June 2007, Mam co-founded the Somaly Mam Foundation, a nonprofit organization formed in the United States that supported anti-trafficking groups and helped women and girls who had been forced into sexual slavery. The Somaly Mam Foundation (SMF) attracted the support of U.S. business leaders and Hollywood stars. SMF was the global fundraising arm of Somaly Mam's Phnom Penh-based AFESIP.
After the May 2014 Newsweek article questioning Mam's claims, the Somaly Mam Foundation undertook its own investigation by Goodwin Procter, a Boston-based law firm. Mam resigned from her position and later the foundation shut down in October 2014. In January 2015, Mam and former operations director of SMF Rigmor Schneider launched a New Somaly Mam Fund as a funding source for AFESIP. In 2016, a new charity, Together1heart, became the primary fundraising vehicle for AFESIP. Actress AnnaLynne McCord serves as CEO of Together1Heart. Posts on the group's Facebook page suggest that Mam is still heavily involved, and McCord insists that Mam is a "survivor" and appears to absolve her of wrongdoing, while stating that neither Together1heart nor AFESIP has made changes as a result of the 2014 public relations crisis.
Scrutiny of Mam's stories
Scrutiny of Mam's story began with comments she made at the United Nations. Speaking on a United Nations panel to member states, international aid organizations and the media in New York on April 3, Mam stated that eight girls had been killed after her organization AFESIP conducted a high-profile raid on a massage parlor at the Chai Hour II Hotel in Phnom Penh, where 83 women and girls were taken and placed in her refuge center. Somaly Mam has since admitted that this was "inaccurate" and that the Cambodian army had not killed eight girls.