\\\\ OUTER VOICES ////

Girls From Cambodia

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Young Cambodian girls in rice field photo

photo by Malia Guyer-Stevens

"Generally this is a radio experience that leaves your mouth agape."
—Viki Merrick, WCAI / WNAN
Read entire review here.

"This is an outstanding documentary. The stories are disturbing, but important to hear. This is great public radio."
—Arvid Hokanson, KUOW
Read entire review here.

One of our first requests for Outer Voices' support came from a Cambodian woman who ran a safe house and job-training program, located outside Phnom Penh, for women and children trying to escape the physical and economic violence of the sex industry. This center has since been forced to close its doors. But the sex industry in Cambodia continues to flourish voraciously.

In January of 2005 our team travelled to Cambodia to meet Chanthol Oung, the head of Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, a grassroots organization dedicated to preventing violence against women, and particularly to stop the illegal sale of young women into the sex industry. We talked to a number of young women who told us their stories of having been sold into brothels and had managed to escape. They also told us about what they are doing with their lives now. These remarkable stories have been chronicled into "Girls From Cambodia", along with the stories of shelter workers, policemen and Chanthol Oung herself, forging the struggle against an entrenched system of human trafficking.

The summer of 2006 saw Outer Voices return to Cambodia in an attempt to offer support to the embattled Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center, with the help of the Urgent Action Fund. For several years, convicted pedophile, New Zealander Graham Cleghorn tried to appeal his court case in Phnom Penh. With media reports being driven by his friends and family about his innocence and the fraudulent stories about the CWCC, there was great danger of his release should his appeal be successful. Our goal was to get the facts straight and publish them widely, to support CWCC in the face of ongoing attacks by the pedophile community. A condensed story, written by Karoline Kemp was carried by Rabble.

This July, Cleghorn’s final appeal was rejected by the Phnom Penh court, which upheld the original ruling made in Siem Reap. You can read the full press release here.
CWCC is to be hugely commended for their long hard work on this case, and for the example they are setting for women’s rights groups worldwide, working to overcome the violence of silence.

Chanthol Oung was the Southeast Asia recipient of an International Woman of Courage Award by the U.S. State Department this year. The "International Women of Courage" award is the State Department's only continuing awards program exclusively for emerging women leaders.

Major underwriting for Girls From Cambodia from The Ford Foundation.

Thanks to the Pohaku Fund for generous support for production costs in Cambodia.

Thanks also to Thai Airways for support and underwriting.

"For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favour life as a whole. To this can be added the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict. Now that we are gaining control of the primary historical role imposed on us of sustaining life in the context of the home and family, it is time to apply in the arena of the world the wisdom and experience thus gained in activities of peace over so many thousands of years. The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all."
—Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (from keynote address to NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, 1995)