Porn kills - No thrill .... All lies - Don't try .... God knows - Say no .... End now - Get out .... Speed call - Don't fall

THERE can be no greater pain for a mother than when her child is kidnapped, drugged and gang-raped. Former Cambodian child prostitute Somaly Mam, 39, knows this. Her elder daughter Melissa suffered this ordeal in 2006, when she was 14.

In the past 13 years, Ms Mam and her helpers have rescued more than 5,000 sex slaves. About 1 in 40 girls in Cambodia is born into the sex trade and between 1.2 million and two million of the country's 13.4 million people are sex slaves today.

With help from patrons such as Queen Sofia of Spain and global corporation LexisNexis, Ms Mam feeds, shelters and trains these prostitutes so they can eke out a living as weavers, hairdressers or tailors.

The divorced mother of three was in town last month to attend the Children & The Law conference in Singapore. Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong said of her in his keynote speech: 'In highlighting the evils of the sexual exploitation of children, I think no one has spoken with a more powerful voice than Ms Somaly Mam.'

In 1993, this wisp of a woman fled Cambodia with the help of a Swiss aid worker. But by 1996, she was back to found the Agir Pour Les Femmes En Situation Precaire (Acting For Women In Distressing Circumstances). This CNN Hero and Time Magazine's Top 100 icon has been showered with many accolades.

Next month, Ms Mam will send off seven of her rehabilitated girls to study at the University of Colorado in the United States. She spoke to The Straits Times of her hopes and fears:

From the victims. They have been raped and yet they try to stand up, go to school, laugh again and love you. Sometimes, I run out of energy. But when I see them, it's like zzzzhhhht! - getting an electric charge from them.

I just want everyone to pay attention to it. Whenever we pass a red-light district and see the women, we...look down on them. I want (people) to ask themselves: 'Why are they in brothels? Where do they come from?'

I can laugh and tell you that we have to enjoy life. But then I go home. I close my eyes. I remember everything.

For 30 years, we were fighting the Khmer Rouge. We now have poor people who are suffering a lot.

Under the Khmer Rouge, we used no money. Then in 1992, the UNTAG (United Nations Transition Assistance Group) came in blue cars. They were all men far away from home, on US$100 per diem and they missed sex. So they bought women. The parents (of these women) had never seen US$1; now they saw US$100.

It tries its best. Now we have a (human) trafficking law, but it's too late for the country.

Organised crime is well-organised. Not us.

We go to the community, schools and the police to talk about our lives. We survivors are part of the solution.

Everywhere. People are so great.

In a brothel, you feel everything is darkness. You never even try to escape because why would you want to do so? Your life (would be) finished. Who would help you? (But) I have been lucky to meet great people.

I feel so sorry for her. Every day, I feel, 'S***. That is me. How (could) I let my children suffer like this?' But she says: 'I would like not to have been raped. But I am luckier (than my rapists) because you (and other people) love me.'

We go to the brothels and give the girls there condoms and hygiene tips. Then we take them to our clinic... The pimps come too but they have to sit outside. We have psychologists, counsellors and (lawyers) talk to the girls. We also have many girls who inform us (of incoming) children and clients. Then we investigate.

In my society, I'm not beautiful. Cambodians like white skin. I'm so dark. But I had a better life because beautiful girls had to accept more clients.

Discrimination - between rich and poor, men and women, normal girls and trafficked girls. That pushes girls back into brothels.

We empower them to talk because Cambodian women don't talk much.