Violence and exposure to HIV among sex workers in Phnom Penh Cambodia.

Abstract

This report focuses on rape and violence perpetrated against sex workers in Phnom Penh. Cambodia has the classic features of a rape-prone society--high levels of general violence male dominance and the silencing of female sexuality. Females who appear to be more sexually open are subject to punishment. In some societies including parts of the United States South Africa and Papua New Guinea (PNG) rape is so widespread and so nearly normative (considered good fun and ok by most men) that it can be considered a male-operated system of social control over women. The situation in Cambodia differs only in that rape appears to be targeted most often at sex workers or women whom men consider to be loose. However Bearup documented an instance of the deliberate rape of a virgin and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights reported an increasing number of rapes of children often by family members. Among the sex workers surveyed in this study several describe how they were raped by family members or others when still virgins. Some suspect that as in South Asia rape functions as a way to prime young women for the sex industry in that they are then considered (and consider themselves) damaged goods and thus suitable only for sex work. Shame and blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator are strong factors in the underreporting of rape to authorities. It is likely that the true level of rape among all women (and males including transgenders) is unknown in Cambodia and should be a high priority for population-based research with proper random sampling. (excerpt)