She risked her life to investigate human trafficking and the sex trade: ‘My life flashed before my eyes’

Sylvia Yu Friedman still vividly remembers her brush with death in 2012, more than a decade ago.

Then a young journalist and filmmaker, Friedman had travelled to a red-light district outside the city limits of southern China to capture footage of underage girls in the sex trade for a documentary.

“The alley was pitch black, no street lamps. There was a low building with sliding glass doors, large windows and pink light.

“There were women in makeup and short skirts looking sad, and thugs with pasty white faces milling around. Vicious dogs were barking. You could palpably feel the ickiness and the danger,” she recounted.

A frontline worker who accompanied Friedman advised her to walk through the alley, pretending to be a tourist and surreptitiously film the scene on her mobile phone.

Friedman’s gut instinct told her she would never get away with it – no female tourist was seen in this part of the country. But so determined was she to get the footage that she hushed her inner voice and braved the walk through the dark alley.

With the footage in hand, she hastened to the getaway car.

In a heartbeat, thugs and mamasans surrounded her, shouting menacingly and demanding to see her phone. Shaking with fear, Friedman deleted her footage, but they did not let her leave.

“I was so scared,” she said. “Just when I thought I was going to get hurt and saw my life flash before my eyes, suddenly, one of the thugs said the police were coming and they scattered like cockroaches when you shine a light.”

That night, Friedman screamed in her room from the terror and trauma. Her post-traumatic stress disorder lasted for months and she had to seek counselling, she told CNA Women.