I cannot read the assumption of western ideas of prostitution and paid sex being “the worst” thing that can happen to a teenager in the article you cited.
He does condemn, and rightly so, forced prostitution. And that is maybe one of the worst forms of forced labor possible, especially when it does concern under aged girls as well, and involves tortures as cited by Kristof. And what he points out is no exaggeration – anyone who has researched this topic in Cambodia and similar countries can verify that easily.
But he also points out that poverty eradication and education is a way out, while he also shows that issues are not that simple, on the example of the one girl that he bought and and who returned to the brothels to feed her addiction.
For a journalistic article that is well done, and does not live on simplistic outrage.

While his cases may be true, the general western (christian) assumption about prostitution in Asia – or anywhere for that matter – that paid sex is the worst thing that can happen to a teenager or adult is often disingenuous. Anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with this trade knows that it is not as simple as it is usually presented. Outrage may sooth one’s conscience, but if there was as much outrage about starvation, forced labour, and preventable disease then lives might actually be improved on a large scale.

There was an article several years ago dealing with this false assumption.
A woman in New York City was a prostitute. Her husband was a heroin addict. The husband contacted AIDS, which he then transmitted to his wife.
She, in turn, transmitted the AIDS virus to over sixty five men.
Several of these men then gave AIDS to their wives or girlfriends.
Lastly, several children got the virus from their mothers.

You might argue that without the AIDS virus added to the mix, there are no victims. But we don’t live in a world where we get to lay the ground rules. AIDS is out there.
Thus, prostitution is not a victimless crime.

I would rather say that legalizing prostitution makes very little difference in undeveloped countries such as Cambodia, where the law is in many areas of life quite irrelevant anyhow.

In my experience, roughly said, forced prostitution is the strongest in the cheapest brothels, less so in the more upmarket places, and affects women and families from the poorest and most disadvantaged sectors of society, and cross border trafficked women without any rights.

If one can eradicate poverty, than forced prostitution will automatically decrease.
But don’t forget that forced prostitution also exists in developed nations such as Japan and most countries in western Europe that have partly legalized prostitution. There most affected are cross border trafficked women from poor countries.

If you look at Thailand, Thai women inside Thailand are rarely forced into prostitution now compared to before, but choose themselves to enter the trade.
Forced prostitutes in Thailand are now mostly women from hill tribes without Thai ID, and women from neighboring countries. More often than not these women work in cheap local brothels most foreigners rarely enter.

But it would be a beginning.

When something is pushed into the underground economy, by definition, it comes in contact with the criminal sector, whose hallmarks are corruption and violence. If prostitution, a victimless crime when it involves two or more consenting adults, were regulated, decriminalized, and/or legalized. the normal regulations of trade and the protections (for both labor and consumer) that stem from them would help lessen, if not eliminate, such instances of forced prostitution.

Thanks for the nice comment about my book.
I don’t view my book as journalism anyhow, i believe that such a complex subculture cannot be sufficiently explained within the limitations of journalism, which by definition is more observant from the outside than participating and engaging.

But i would most definitely not want to be a participating part in this particular Cambodian scenery – that is a darkness that is too much for me. Just reporting on it in a journalistic way was more than i could take.

You are right though with your point of the sanctimonious nature of Kristof’s reporting – it is superficial in many ways, and explains little beyond we know already.

At the same time, and I know that this is tricky and will draw criticism, I think Kristof’s reporting does need to be scrutinised. He is a celebrity reporter and seems to take up some topics that encourage moral outrage (and many of them should – child prostitution, forced sex work, outrages in Darfur) but tends to individualise the problems – this approach grabs at heartstrings – without necessarily revealing much more than saying that these outrages occur.

Some might argue that it is fair enough to keep saying it and keep it on various agendas. However, there are other outrages (for me) that he treats rather differently. Recall his “Two cheers for sweatshops” article with WuDunn a few years ago. In some research works, sweatshops and prostitution seem to have interesting relationships, but Kristof essentially praised sweatshops.

And then there are some of the issues that others have raised here – the buying out a woman and having her run back to the brothel, for example. It is interesting to note that this story was not only in the NYT but on CNN and was one of those reporter-as-sleuth things which didn’t really dig into the story. After a number of articles and TV stories on sex work of various kinds mainly focused on Cambodia, wouldn’t you expect him to be getting beyond the sensational headline? Wouldn’t you want him to be showing some evidence of a growing understanding of the troubling issues that have been so divisive of feminists and NGOs working in the field? Wouldn’t you want him to look at the issues that bring together interesting political coalitions in, say, Washington? Should some questions be asked about why the Bush administration has funded so much trafficking work, much of it by fundamentalist Christian organisations, while not being interested and providing almost no funding for anti-AIDS work, related family planning initiatives and agencies that work directly with sex workers but do not toe the required trafficking and abstinence lines?

Some of this is shown in a rather good (IMHO) documentary – Trading Women – that was put together by David Feingold a couple of years ago. A very thought-provoking approach, which Feingold has also taken up in print.

And I guess another thing that would interest me about Kristof relates to his career as a public speaker, where he gets paid quite substantial amounts (I happened to have a minor part in an organising group for one of his campus talks a couple of years ago). I have no idea whether this money is put to good use in supporting the NGOs and others who assist him to do his reports in Cambodia and Darfur.