In May 2002, International Justice Mission lawyer Sharon Cohn Wu sat down with her colleague at a hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to interview four confused and frightened young girls who, until that moment, were trapped in a commercial sex trafficking industry notorious for selling and exploiting children.
The 11-year-old, two 12-year-olds and a 13-year-old were expecting to be sexually exploited when they arrived at the hotel. But after being dropped off by their pimp — following what appeared to be the request of a customer — they encountered instead the young American lawyer with striking dark curly hair and her male colleague.
Cohn Wu’s colleague with her that day was an undercover investigator who had posed as a customer at the brothel in Svay Pak — a village about 11 kilometers from Phnom Penh that was well known for selling girls — some of them as young as 5 years old — for sexual exploitation.