One of the world's best-known anti-sex
slavery activists has resigned from her foundation after questions were
raised about her shocking story of being sold into a brothel as a child.
Somaly
Mam, a glamorous and energetic Cambodian campaigner, boasts a string of
celebrity supporters and has been named a CNN hero of the year, but
recently she has been at the centre of controversy.
Her
decision to step down follows an investigation by the US-based law firm
Goodwin Procter into her personal history, according to a statement
released late Wednesday by her eponymous foundation, which did not
reveal what the probe had uncovered.
"While we are
extremely saddened by this news, we remain grateful to Somaly's work
over the past two decades and for helping to build a foundation that has
served thousands of women and girls, and has raised critical awareness
of the nearly 21 million individuals who are currently enslaved today,"
the statement said.
Mam says she was sold into a
brothel as a child by her "grandfather" and repeatedly raped and abused
until, after seeing a friend killed in front of her, she escaped.
"I was completely broken," she told AFP in an interview in 2012.
But
the English-language newspaper The Cambodia Daily and Newsweek magazine
have reported what they say are inconsistencies in her account.
The
Newsweek story, titled "Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex
Trafficking", said its own interviews with the activist's childhood
acquaintances, teachers and local officials contradicted important parts
of her autobiography.
The foundation said it had also severed links with another supposed victim of sex trafficking, Long Pros.
Pros's
family told Newsweek that she was never a victim of sex trafficking,
despite her story that as a young sex slave she was tortured with
electric wires and had an eye gouged out by an angry pimp.
Another
girl has confessed that her story was fabricated and carefully
rehearsed for the cameras under Mam's instruction, the report said.
Mam
is no stranger to controversy. In 2011 she allowed a New York Times
correspondent to "live-tweet" a brothel raid in Cambodia -- a move
slammed by other campaigners as a PR stunt.
She also takes a controversially hardline stance that all sex workers are victims.
Her foundation said that despite its "heartfelt disappointment" it would carry on but on a "revised course".
"Our work changes lives and we remain dedicated to it," the statement said.
There are more than 34,000 commercial sex workers in Cambodia, according to a 2009 government estimate
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