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Lately, Ralte has become concerned that there are not enough good Christian suitors for her girls. "Some of the boys were addicted to opium and brought problems into their marriages." So she brought 40 boys to her school and has been a mountain matchmaker. "I have not lost a girl to prostitution yet."

Like a mountain warlord, Ralte fights off the dangers of modern society. Now, she is extending her impact by training lay leaders from all over the region in her new Bible training institute.

RISK OF AIDS: But too many girls from the villages still slip down into Thailand's coastal plain to cities, such as Chiang Mai, about 325 miles from Bangkok.

Despite rumors of woe and the visible presence of aids, many mountain girls nonetheless end up as prostitutes.

Author and researcher Bales, who is a Quaker, vividly recalls one child prostitute, Siri, who told him that she was frightened of AIDS because of the number of young prostitutes from her village who returned home to die from AIDS after being sold into the brothels. Siri was living in a 5-by-7-foot room and would have sexual relations with as many as 15 men in one evening.

Another young woman, Miisa, ran away from slavelike conditions in the mountains to find work in Chiang Mai. There she came across Lauran Bethell, also an American Baptist missionary. Bethell, with her ministry team, combs the streets and brothels for girls at risk of being lured, tricked, or kidnapped into prostitution. "If you don't get to the girls within a couple of months of becoming a prostitute, they almost never make it out," Bethell says. "By that time they don't have much to lose and have be come addicted to the money and sex." Many believe that the only way they can become part of modern society is to make money by selling their bodies.

However, several hundred girls have been rescued by Bethell, a California native. Two-thirds of her staff are tribal women who themselves came from the brothels and streets.

In 1987, Bethell founded New Life Center in Chiang Mai by taking in 18 girls. Known as an anti-madam, Bethell now rescues, houses, and educates more than a hundred girls at a time.

"One of our very first girls, Miisa, came from a brothel," she recalls. "At first she didn't know whether to trust us. Here we are with a house of girls just like another brothel."

At age 13, Miisa ran away from her mountain home and fell into the hands of a brothel owner. "She cried every night and was used by seven or eight men a day in a tiny, dark room," says Bethell, who led police to raid the brothel.

"The girls have a spiritual vacuum inside and are searching for a spiritual answer," Bethell says. "Here they are treated like they have never been treated in their lives. New Life is the most secure place they have ever been. We share Jesus, and they absorb it like a sponge."

Bethell has been asked by the International Justice Mission (CT, Aug. 9, 1999, p. 34) to teach other groups around the world how to help girl prostitutes. Attention started to come to New Life Center as a result of a visit in 1996 by First Lady Hillary Clinton. "She enhanced the view of us in the eyes of the local Thai government," Bethell says. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Madeline Albright followed up Clinton's visit by asking Bethell and tribal members of her staff how she could help.

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October 4 1999, Vol. 43, No. 11