In Cambodia, American Evangelicals Fight to End Child Sex Trafficking

Christian Volunteer: 'There Is a Deep Fulfillment in Laying Your Life Down for Somebody Else'

20 comments

By DAN HARRIS, ALMIN KARAMEHMEDOVIC, AUDE SOICHET and SIDNEY WRIGHT IV

SVAY PAK, Cambodia, March 21, 2010

Clay Butler, a 27-year-old evangelical Christian from California, points to a group of children playing in the street and said, "I know kids in that group who are being trafficked. I know the situations, I know the brothels that they're in."

Dan Harris examines why children are being exploited as sex slaves.

Butler runs a community center in the village of Svay Pak, the epicenter ofCambodia's raging child sex trafficking epidemic. It's a place where, on any given night, many of the children will be sold -- by their own parents -- for sex with strangers.

He is one of many American Christians who have come to this impoverished,war-ravaged country to protect some of the world's most vulnerable children.

"I think the most exciting part of Christianity is living it out," Butler said. "This stuff is not fun at all, but there is a deep fulfillment in laying your life down for somebody else."