A screen grab from the YouTube clip entitled 'Trapped - The underage sex industry in Malaysia'. - YouTube, September 20, 2014.Malaysia, which has been downgraded to Tier 3 for its lack of progress in fighting human trafficking, now has another damning piece of evidence against it in a video documentary on the underage sex trade in the capital.
The video, now on YouTube and titled "Trapped – The underage sex industry in Malaysia", is the result of two years of research by journalists Mahi Ramakrishnan and Rian Maelzer.
Mahi said she was working on another story four years ago when she stumbled upon one that was much bigger – that of underaged foreign children used in the sex trade. It shocked her, as she had never imagined that such a thing was happening in Malaysia.
"I never knew that such a thing existed in Malaysia. I mean, everyone knows that this happens in Thailand but I really had no idea that the underage sex trade was alive and well here," she told The Malaysian Insider.
"You hardly hear about it and no one really addresses it. It is really under-reported."
An investigative journalist, Mahi decided she would follow the story and began devoting many nights to visiting "dubious" areas in Bukit Bintang and Chow Kit in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur.
"I talked to everyone. I spent hours every day in these areas and these people even laughed at my face. They denied that there was such a thing."
But discussions with child rights advocate Dr Hartini Zainuddin encouraged this USA Today correspondent to pursue the story despite the challenges.
Two years later, Mahi, with the help of another journalist, Maelzer, finally finished a video highlighting the plight of underage sex workers in Malaysia and the concerns surrounding the issue.
"It took me a long time to develop friendships with brothel owners and get them to allow me to speak to their people. Finding these children who worked as sex workers was one of the biggest challenges I had to face," she added.
"I would go every day and spend time at these places, talking to them from about 11pm to the wee hours of the morning."
Another challenge Mahi had to deal with while researching the subject was to face her own fears.
"I was scared, really scared. I wasn't sure how deeply embedded the child sex trade was in Malaysia with all the syndicates and triads.
"I have two daughters myself. And it was difficult for me to come to terms that I was doing this story, as I could not help but imagine what if it had been my daughter in that position."
The 22-minute video was released on YouTube only a week ago and has so far received about 600 views.
The video features interviews with the police, child activists and psychologists and three sex workers who are underaged but seasoned in their trade. Two of them tell Mahi that they do it for the money while the other revealed that she had been tricked into prostitution after reaching Malaysia.
"We did some small screenings of the video before this and had not released the video online previously because of some concerns.
"But we did it now, not only to create awareness that such a problem actually exists but also to come up with durable solutions to it," she added.
Mahi said that the response to the video has so far been encouraging while some could not believe what they were seeing.
"Lots of people were in absolute shock. They just could not fathom that there are kids in Malaysia who are sex workers," she added.
She said that she was in the midst of getting in touch with lobby groups all over the world to show them the video.
"I am hoping that they would get in touch with Malaysian lobby groups and work together to address the problem and nip child sex trade in the bud," she said.
The United States’ annual Trafficking of Persons report in June this year downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3 for lack of compliance with minimum standards in fighting human trafficking. The report noted that there was ample evidence of forced labour and sex trafficking in Malaysia.
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