Sex TraffickingArchive 2008–2016

Sex Trafficking in Bangkok (2008)

A sex trafficking case from 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand.

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Documented on the original SlaveryMap (2008–2016). We don’t have a verifiable source on file yet. Know one?

What happened

Nikki, who is from Central Asia, was desperate to find a job after her husband died of a heart attack. A friend told her that she could make a lot of money in Bangkok serving as a "companion" for wealthy clients at exclusive hotels. So she left her two children in her home country to try out the new job in Bangkok. She didn't realize until her first night in Bangkok that she would be prostituting herself, and she did not realize it would turn into three years of hell. But by then it was too late. The owners of the hotel intimidated and threatened her into submission.

Response and intervention

Yes. The hotel had kept Nikki's belongings. Two NightLight volunteers went to the hotel to recoup them, but the hotel manager refused to turn them over unless Nikki showed up in person. NightLight contacted a supportive high-ranking police officer in Bangkok and he arranged for an escort of six police officers to accompany Nikki and two NightLight volunteers to hand over her belongings, which the hotel staff did promptly. A Thai customer befriended Nikki and became her boyfriend, but he turned abusive. She fled but the boyfriend called the police and had her arrested on a trumped up charge. While she was in jail, a cellmate gave her a contact phone number for NightLight. Once she was released from jail, Nikki sent a text message to NightLight: "Can you help me please?" She arrived at the shelter with the clothes on her back. Nikki no longer had a passport or other identity documents - they had been taken from her long ago. So she stayed at NightLight and worked (making jewelry) while she waited for new documents to be issued to her. In August 2008 she returned to her home in Central Asia. She was given a kit that would enable her to keep making jewelry as a livelihood once home. NightLight in Bangkok NightLight report to Not For Sale.

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"The three unmarked police cars ahead of us pulled up in front of the brothel, and the police and prosecutor ran in. Somaly and I followed and watched as police with assault rifles confiscated cellphones from the brothel manager, a middle-aged woman, and her male partner, so that they couldn’t call for reinforcements. We quickly found five girls and one young woman, three Cambodians and three Vietnamese. The youngest turned out to be a seventh grader trafficked from Vietnam three months earlier, making her about 12 years old. The anti-trafficking police found 10 rooms equipped with beds and full of discarded condoms in the trash; the rooms all locked with padlocks from the outside, presumably to incarcerate girls inside. Several other young girls Somaly had photographed in her earlier visit couldn’t be found, despite a frantic search of all the locked rooms. 'They’re probably kept at another house in town, but we don’t know where it is,' Somaly said." --http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/kristof-fighting-back-one-brothel-raid-at-a-time.html

1 sourceArchive 2008–2016