Teenage slaves to region’s sex trade

The Australian
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent
June 19, 2010

SUTHINI was 14 when she was forced to hide in the boot of a car and transported, without documents, across Indonesia’s land border into Malaysia to be sold into forced prostitution

Suthini (not her real name) protested vehemently on arrival at the boarding house where her new owner was to keep her captive but was punished with kicks and beatings.

Eventually, after what the Indonesian girl was told was a medical test to verify her virginity, she was raped by two men in a hotel room in Kuching, East Malaysia.

“They took some kind of stimulant [for themselves] and they gave me something to drink so that I didn’t know what was going on,” the shy village teenager says in an almost-whisper, sitting in an office at the Jakarta women’s refuge where she has started rebuilding her life in recent weeks. read more..