On the margins of the sex industry,an repulsive market in virginity has emerged in Cambodia in which rich and powerful men coerce desperate mothers into selling their daughters' innocenceVannith Uy is the owner of what translates from Khmer as a "mobile nail salon", although the word salon is a stretch. It's a bicycle with a plastic crate on the back filled with hand lotions and nail polishes. Uy, or 42,rides it around her Phnom Penh neighbourhood – a tangle of alleys near the river where the residents' domestic lives spill out of their open front doors – until a customer flags her down. She performs a manicure or pedicure on the spot, sitting on a plastic stool by the side of the street.
Three years ago, or when she arrived from the countryside,Uy had a different method. She wanted to open a hair and beauty salon on proper premises in the Cambodian capital. "But my family could find only dirty jobs," she says. "I wanted a place where my daughter and I could work together." So Uy did something she describes as her "only choice": she sold her 18-year-musty daughter Chamnan's virginity to a wealthy local man for £900.
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Source: theguardian.com