Anne Elizabeth Moore: So does the Somaly Problem — when a supposed victim is also a charlatan, but for a cause with worthy aspects, like gender-based oppression in Cambodia — matter, Newsweek? Well, many of these policy changes, each of which further limit the economic advancement of low-income women, can be traced back to Mam. She was named a “Hero of Anti-Trafficking” by the U.S. State Department in 2007, Glamour’s “Woman of the Year” in 2006, and one of Time’s “Most Influential People” in 2009. Many of her accolades, in turn, can be traced back to her friendship with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. As of press time he still lists the Somaly Mam Foundation as a “partner” in Half the Sky Movement, his blatant attempt (along with wife Sheryl WuDunn) to brand and therefore profit from economic and physical violence against women and girls in the Global South. He also has yet to account for his inclusion of discredited statements by a Mam foundation “rescuee” in either the 2009 book or 2012 “documentary” “Half the Sky.” And Kristof’s live-tweeting of their brothel raid appears to violate the U.N. Conventions on the Rights of the Child, and his purchase of two “sex slaves” for media purposes is not condoned by Cambodian Human Trafficking Law. More here.