Confessions of a Sex Slave

The story of Sreypov Chan would be unbelievable as fiction, let alone as a true account of a young girl’s life. Chan was sold to a brothel in Phnom Penh when she was 7 years old. Between the ages of 7 and 10, pimps forced Chan to have sex with up to 20 men a day. When she initially refused sex, a pimp forced her to drink a client’s urine, then covered her with biting ants, and beat her with an electric cable. When she still refused, he put hot chili peppers and a hot metal rod up her vagina, then let the client rape her. The woman who sold her to the brothel? Her mother. “I wanted to die,” said Chan, now 20, in an exclusive Marie Claire interview. Although Chan’s experience is unfathomable, she is considered lucky to have escaped (after two failed attempts). Chan, who says she can’t be with a man ever again, now works for a center for rescued sex workers.