Four years of sexual servitude had shattered Srey Mom's spirit and left her with no real family, other than the brothel owner she called ''Mother.''

After I had purchased the freedom of Srey Mom and Srey Neth, the two teenage prostitutes whose story I've told in my last three columns, we took Srey Neth back to her family. Then we had to drive clear across the country to return Srey Mom to her native village. During that long drive, she repeatedly vowed that she would never return to the brothels -- but she said it so insistently that the possibility clearly preyed on her mind.

''I'm going to go to the pagoda to pray that I never go back,'' she said, for she had seen other girls rescued from the brothels who ended up ostracized by outsiders and slinking back again.

Srey Mom worried constantly during the drive whether her mother would ever accept her again since a stormy relationship with her mother had led her to run away from home at the age of 14. A woman at a bus station had befriended Srey Mom and handed her over to a brothel. The brothel's owner rubbed her with pineapple juice, which supposedly lightens the skin, and sold her virginity to a businessman.