Sometimes our work with trafficked girls in Cambodia takes unexpected turns. Currently, Stephanie Freed is on assignment in country. She took a film crew to Women's Island, a former detention center where women and children were exiled and executed during Pol Pot's regime.
"While there, she saw a little boy sitting naked in the dirt yard nearby a shanty house. She relates the story:
As I approached him, he turned his head, and to my horror, I saw a huge protrusion from the side of his little baby head. I thought he had a horrible birth defect—it honestly looks like another small head… Then I realized it was oozing and there were flies in it.…
"His father abandoned his mother. His mother is prostituting in Phnom Penh, and nobody knows if she will ever come back. His grandmother is a drunk and supposedly beat his head…So he survives by crawling around from shack to shack looking for food. He looks to be about one and cannot walk, but the neighbors who began to gather said he was probably closer to two years old. I asked his name. Everyone agreed that he had NO NAME! So here is a baby who is malnourished and pulling himself naked through the dirt with an open fly infested wound with no caregiver in the world and NO NAME!"
From there, Stephanie took the boy to the children's hospital in Phnom Penh where he will receive proper medical treatment. The goal is to get him placed in a good children's home. Pray for little Derek Anthony Sath—the little boy without a name now has one. The three workers accompanying Stephanie gave him each one of theirs. Perhaps this unexpected turn will lead to a whole new start for the boy with a new name.
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:14)
