Phnom Penh Municipal Court last Friday sentenced a woman to eight years in jail for forcing seven children to beg on the street, according to a lawyer with the International Justice Mission Cambodia.

Sek Saroeun, a lawyer defending the seven child victims, said Phuong Channy, 50, was sentenced by Judge Mong Monisophea to eight years in prison according to Article 12 of the Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation.

Saroeun said the women forced the seven children to go beg on the street and had to give her at least $2 a day or they would be beaten with electric wire and forced to sleep on the benches along the streets. He said this practice had been going on for the last eight years.

O Kim An, secretariat of the Phnom Penh Military Police, said that Channy also used accomplices to aid her in the exploitation children and infants.

“She hired children of other beggars and among the seven children, five were young ones who were forced to beg along the street, and two were just infants. She carried one and she also hired another woman to carry another child as they begged. She was the organiser of all of this,” Kim An said.