An anti-sex trafficking activist has resigned as head of her charity following allegations that she may have been dishonest about her past.
Somaly Mam, of Cambodia, resigned from her self-titled foundation on Wednesday after an investigation into her story that she escaped life as a sex slave and went on to help other sex trafficking victims, NBC News reported.
"We have accepted Somaly's resignation effective immediately," Gina Reiss-Wilchins, executive director of the Somaly Mam Foundation, said in a statement.
"While we are extremely saddened by this news, we remain grateful to Somaly's work over the past two decades and for helping to build a foundation that has served thousands of women and girls," the statement continued.
Mam became a noted humanitarian by helping other women escape sex trafficking, inspiring others with her own story of being sold as a sex slave in 1979.
She said she was raped as a child, forced to marry a soldier at 14 and later sold to a brothel, according to the Daily Mail. Mam managed to escape the nightmare and went on to marry a French man who took her to Europe. She later started her foundation to help other girls like her in Cambodia.
But Mam's story started to unravel when inconsistencies appeared between details of her past in a 2005 autobiography and the story she told in interviews.
One woman who was reportedly rescued by Mam's foundation came forward and said Mam told her to say she was a child prostitute during a 1998 interview.
"Somaly said that...if I want to help another woman I have to do (the 1998 interview) very well," Meas Ratha said last year according to the Daily Mail.
Another woman, Long Pross, said during an interview on "Oprah" that she was tortured as a child by the female owner of a brothel. She claimed Mam's foundation rescued her. The foundation has now severed all association with Pross, NBC News reported.
Reiss-Wilchins said she does not want Mam's resignation to shadow all the good work the foundation has done.
"We have treated nearly 6,000 individuals at a free medical clinic in Phnom Penh's red light district and engaged nearly 6,400 students in anti-trafficking activism," she said in the statement.
