When Sources May Have Lied

Nicolas Kristof / International New York Times | 7 June 2014

Somaly Mam described having been trafficked into a brothel as a young girl in Cambodia, then escaping and helping others—and she came to run a couple of organizations in Cambodia that battled forced prostitution. She wrote an autobiography, was feted at the State Department and Kennedy Center, and celebrated by journalists. Including me. I wrote one column about her life story in 2008 after her autobiography was published in the U.S., and made several references to her after that, most recently in 2011.

I thought she was a hero and, in fairness, so did lots of others. Glamour was among the first to notice and honor her, in 2006, and she was a CNN hero in 2007 and a protagonist in an American book that year, “In Search of Hope.” She was also a Time 100 figure, a speaker at Fortune’s “most powerful women” conference, and one of Newseek/Daily Beast’s Women who Shake the World. The Washington Post wrote about her in 2007 and then in 2008 published one of the longest and most detailed tributes to her.

Now, as you probably know, all that is in doubt. Newsweek, after previously celebrating Somaly Mam, suggested recently that her back story might have been faked. It quoted people who said that rather than being trafficked as a young girl into a brothel, she had attended school and trained to be a teacher. I’ve been seeing if I could shed any more light on this.

Somaly Mam denies the charges and stands by her story. The Newsweek allegations gain credibility from the richness of the reporting and from the fact that she subsequently resigned from one of her aid groups, Somaly Mam Foundation, though perhaps not from the other, Afesip. Young women who escaped Cambodian brothels and were helped by Somaly Mam are strongly backing her. A parallel accusation is that Long Pross, a young woman who had worked with Somaly Mam, concocted her story about losing an eye to a violent brothel manager. I wrote about Long Pross in a 2009 column. Newsweek says she lost the eye naturally; Long Pross sticks by her story.

I wrote a brief blog post and said I would do some digging. Part of the reason I took some time is that I wanted to do some research. I didn’t find anything definitive, but I think Newsweek makes a strong case. There are many theories, one of which is is that Somaly was in the sex trade for a time, but was not trafficked as a child; I can’t be sure of the truth. The bottom line though is that I would never write about Somaly or Long Pross now. In the Times archive, we’ve added notes to the past columns mentioning Somaly Mam and Long Pross. 

So if we were all hoodwinked, how did that happen? Were we cavalier? I can’t speak for others, but before writing about them I saw Somaly and Long Pross at work in Cambodia, interviewed them at length on multiple occasions, had them take me to sites in their past, and talked to aid workers, diplomats, doctors and even brothel owners. No questions about their stories arose. GuideStar, which rates charities, gives Somaly Mam Foundation five stars. We journalists often rely to a considerable extent on people to tell the truth, especially when they have written unchallenged autobiographies. We also tend to be more suspicious of biographical claims that portray someone in a good light, such as university degrees or military service. We’re less suspicious if someone claims something stigmatizing, like being trafficked into a brothel.

Sometimes there are doubts about a backstory, of course, but that wasn’t true of Somaly Mam until long after I last wrote about her. There were other criticisms of her, but they didn’t have to do with her past or any of the issues now in debate. For me, the first significant suspicions were aroused in 2012, around when the Cambodia Daily reported doubts about the Long Pross story. As columnists we normally are focused forward rather than on five-year-old columns, but the Cambodia Daily piece troubled me enough that I reached out to various people including the doctor who was quoted as saying that Long Pross was lying; he didn’t respond. These uncertainties are one reason I haven’t mentioned Somaly Mam in my writing since 2011. (One irony: This post is longer than the column I wrote on Somaly, and I’ve now written more about her for The Times post-scandal than pre-scandal.)

The sex trafficking situation improved in Cambodia over the years, and I think Somaly deserves some credit for that (along with State Department pressure and many other factors), but good work helping others certainly doesn’t give anyone the right to embellish their backstory. Truth is paramount. On the other hand, let’s not lose sight of the larger issue: Surely it’s also significant that 21 million people worldwide are subjected to forced labor, including forced prostitution, according to the International Labor Organization. I first began to report on this issue when I saw very young girls imprisoned in brothels in Cambodia and sold for their virginity, back in the 1990’s. Some critics think that the latest episode discredits the kind of rescues Somaly Mam engaged in. I don’t buy that: I saw a seventh grade Vietnamese girl locked up in an armed Cambodian military-run brothel. Does anybody really believe that she should have remained there to die of AIDS?

Sorting out the facts will take time, and we may never know for sure what is true or false in Somaly Mam’s past. I now wish I had never written about her, given my doubts, and I assume the same is true of The Washington Post, CNN, Time and other news organizations. But I also hope that people will be as diligent in covering the scandal that is human trafficking as the (likely) scandal of false or embellished backstories.