Pimps initially identify and train very poor Kampuchean girls, aged 13 to 18, to sell their virginity to the highest bidder. The fee to deflower an unexperienced female teen is between $1,200 and $2,500. With that amount, a winning bidder would get to spend a week with a virgin.

Short Video on the Cambodian Virgin Trade

While the fee is quite high, the poor victims of the virgin trade get only 30 to 60 percent of the payment while the rest is taken by the female pimp, called mamasan, disclosed Tm Huon of APLE.

Besides wealthy Chinese men, other customers of the mamasans are Cambodians, Chinese, Korean and Japanese who believe that sex with a virgin not only brings good health but even cures ailments. To find where the young virgins stay, Huon said most of the mamasans use beauty salons close to the Central Market in Phnom Penh.

Sex workers on Svay Pak's main brothel strip. Many virgins are sold to the highest bidder. Photo: James Thompson

Sex workers on Svay Pak’s main brothel strip. Many virgins are sold to the highest bidder. Photo: James Thompson

To ensure that wealthy men get their money’s worth, once a deal is arranged, the mamasan brings the girl to a doctor who would confirm the girl’s hymen is still intact. The doctor issues a medical certificate as proof. Huon says three doctors in the capital city usually certify that the Kampuchean girls are virgins, but he added certifying girls as virgins is not an illegal act, unless the medics are aware there is sex trafficking involved.

Armed with a doctor’s certificate, the mamasan escorts the young virgins to the buyer’s hotel room for seven days of sexual abuse for the young Cambodian girls.

Dara Keo, in the room she rents with her mother and sister in a Phnom Penh slum. Through a broker, her mother sold Dara's virginity when Dara was only 12. Photograph: Will Baxter

Dara Keo, in the room she rents with her mother and sister in a Phnom Penh slum. Through a broker, her mother sold Dara’s virginity when Dara was only 12. Photograph: Will Baxter

KY3 reported that beside the Phnom Penh-based prostitution and child trafficking ring, a similar syndicate was busted by the FBI, together with local, state and federal law enforcers. The ring’s name is Operation Cross County X.

The group recovered five children aged between 15 and 17, four human trafficking adult female victims and the arrest of 12 pimps and 14 johns charged by state and federal agencies. Most of the young victims are Cambodian, Thai and Filipino children.

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