HUONG was only 15 when she went out to meet a friend in Lao Cai, a city in northern Vietnam on the Chinese border (see map). She thought she would be gone a few hours, but it was three years before she managed to return home. Her friend had brought with her two acquaintances—young men with motorcycles. They squired the girls around town and took them to a karaoke bar, where their drinks were spiked. When the girls grew drowsy they were hoisted back onto the bikes, each sandwiched between two male riders. They were driven into the hills and across the Chinese border to a remote house in the countryside. There they were told they would be sold. The girls screamed and cried but were subdued by two men, one of them wielding a stick. The traffickers told Huong that by crossing the border she had sullied her reputation, but that if she behaved well they would find her a Chinese husband. After marrying she might find a way home, they said. If she refused she would stay stranded in the hills.
Huong—a pseudonym, to protect her identity—is now 20 years old. She lives in a large bungalow in Lao Cai, which she shares with a dozen women aged between 15 and 24 (an occupant is pictured). They are all survivors of trafficking networks that smuggle girls across the Vietnam-China border, sometimes to be sold as prostitutes but more often as brides. Their house, with its enormous teddy bears and fleet of fuchsia-pink bicycles, is a shelter run by Pacific Links Foundation, an American charity, which helps victims finish their education and cope with their trauma.
