An ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure
Human traffickers prey on vulnerability. They see people who are in need and coerce them into dangerous situations with promises of stability. This is precisely what happened to Vannak Prum of Cambodia back in 2006. He was looking for work to support his pregnant wife and pay for the medical bills that would come when their child was born and was promised work in Thailand by a man he met during his job search. It wasn't until he had been crammed into a truck, driven across the border into Thailand, and thrown into a cement room near the ocean that he realized he had been sold to work on a fishing boat by the very people who had promised him a job. He spent three years trapped on that fishing boat, where he and his fellow workers were forced to endure brutal living and work conditions. Prum recalls being beaten with the tail of a stingray and witnessing the captain behead another man right in front of him.
After three years, Prum finally saw land in Malaysia after making a daring escape from the fishing boat. But the authorities he begged for help turned around and sold him again, this time to work on a palm oil plantation. While on the plantation, Prum was wounded in a fight and was taken to a hospital. It was there that he was able to contact Cambodian officials finally. He was advised by the Malaysian police who had sold him to admit to being an illegal immigrant instead of a trafficking survivor, with the suggestion that he'd get sent home sooner that way. Instead, Prum was sentenced to three months in jail and spent an additional seven months locked up in other institutions before finally being released in 2010. After four years, he eventually returned home to Cambodia, where he made it his mission to educate others on human trafficking dangers. In 2012, he was named a "Trafficking in person Hero" from the state department for his work in combating modern-day slavery.
To read the his entire story, follow the link below.
http://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/vannak-prum