In 2024, Lydia Bowden went to Cambodia and Thailand for a week. It was not for a holiday or for work. Neither was it for a mission trip, though she was undoubtedly on a mission.

The founder of non-profit organisation UNHEARD, which tells redemptive stories of survivors of trafficking, exploitation and abuse, was there to retrace the steps of a young couple who had been trafficked into Cambodia and forced to become online scammers for a criminal network.

The scam farm in Cambodia was in plain sight.

“It was very surreal seeing the places where they had been held and forced to scam. The buildings were truly just out in the open and in plain sight. Having heard their stories firsthand only one day before, the immediacy of it all coming to life in front of our eyes was sobering,” the 41-year-old shared.

Lydia with creative director of Cadence, Rich Thompson, in Cambodia retracing the steps of the scam victims.

Along with partner creative agency Cadence Media, which helps non-profit and faith-based organisations tell their stories, Lydia produced a six-part podcast detailing the young couple’s ordeal. The Fight of My Life: Escaping Scam City was released on May 26 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

“We wanted people to meet the survivors. Our hope is that listeners will be so moved (by their story) that they would become advocates either in fundraising or in their churches. We also want Christian businesses and leaders to see how they can be part of the solution to end these exploitations,” said Lydia.

Convinced her parents to adopt two orphans

Long before she became a voice for the voiceless through her work, Lydia already had a deep passion to right the wrongs in the world.

Raised by Christian parents, she grew up in a town west of Philadelphia in the US. Her father was a doctor who worked in addiction medicine and her mother was a social worker. 

Even as a young girl, Lydia had a strong sense of justice.

At 13, she went on a mission trip with her church to Moscow where she visited an orphanage and made friends with a four-year-old girl named Anya. “I was very moved, very touched by her situation,” Lydia recalled.

She came home and insisted that her parents adopt Anya. But her parents, who already had four children, were not about to add another to their brood.

“Then someone sent a VHS tape of me with Anya. This was in 1998. Watching the video was the turning point (for my parents). You could see for yourself, she was the littlest there.”

Moved, her parents called various adoption agencies to put in the paperwork to adopt Anya. A few months in, they received a phone call saying that Anya had an older sister in another orphanage. If they adopted Anya, they would have to take in her nine-year-old sister as well.

“Her sister’s name was Maria and Anya is short for Anna. My two older sisters are Maria and Anna. My parents saw it as a sign,” said Lydia.

Lydia Bowden (sixth from right in red sweater) with her extended family in the US. Her adopted sister Anya (in orange) gave birth to her first child about one week after this photo was taken. Her other adopted sister Masha (fifth from left in black) is seen here with her arm around one of her daughters.

In 1999, Maria, now renamed Masha, and Anya officially joined Lydia’s household. That episode became instrumental in opening Lydia’s eyes to the transformative impact of social justice.

“I got to see what happens when you step in and intervene. So I do believe in the power of helping those who are in front of you,” she said.

“I have always had a heart for people who are forced to leave their homes, whatever that looks like … The Bible calls us to not forget those who are. We can’t ignore God’s call to speak up for the marginalised, stand up for the widows, orphans, the oppressed.”

The impact of a story

Lydia would go on to study social work and earn a Master of International Development before working in various non-profit organisations in Europe, where she helped refugees, migrants and victims of trafficking.  

Even when she followed her British husband to Singapore in 2013 for his work, her desire to advocate for the helpless did not abate.

She volunteered with HOME (Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics), which serves and advocates for migrant workers in Singapore, as well started a social service arm in her church to reach out to low-income residents in Jalan Kukoh.

In 2019, she also started International Justice Mission Singapore (IJM Singapore), a local branch of the non-profit organisation that fights against modern slavery, exploitation and abuse of women and children.

Working with several non-profit organisations and encountering many people in need gave Lydia the conviction that their stories needed to be heard by more.

“The world needs more redemptive stories. I wanted to communicate the depth and breadth of the story, and found the best way was long-form storytelling,” she said.

For a start, Lydia partnered Cadence Media in 2022 to recount the ordeal of Ruby (not her real name), a 16-year-old from the Philippines who had been tricked into online sex trafficking. The six-part podcast, The Fight of My Life: Finding Ruby, has since been downloaded 60,000 times worldwide.

The podcast Finding Ruby gave the team a glimpse of the power of long-form storytelling.

“We did it in a true crime genre and it seemed to entice people. People think that audiences don’t have the attention span for long-form content, but they do if you do it well, if you can capture people’s attention,” said Lydia.

The podcast opened doors for Ruby’s story to be heard by a far larger audience than expected. Following the podcast, Ruby was featured on news platforms like Tatler, CNN and People magazine.

Her story was also highlighted at global events such as the Fintech Festival in Singapore and the SING Conference in the US, reaching 150,000 people globally.

As she became the face of the fight against sex exploitation, Ruby also appeared before the US Senate Hearing Committee and the Lausanne Global Conference in Korea. All these also helped to raise funds for IJM, which had supported Ruby in her rescue and healing journey.

Said Lydia: “In a 60-second post, you might not walk away with enough knowledge to do more. But with long-form content, people were moved to the point where they knew what to do with what they had heard.”

Real love in a fraud farm

Seeing the power of podcasts to reach audiences, Lydia stepped out of IJM Singapore and started UNHEARD, a storytelling platform that seeks to encourage conversation and change around pressing issues.

“This is a platform for survivors who didn’t have the resources to tell their stories before. We want to amplify the small voices of the world,” said Lydia.

Micah and Ava being interviewed in Thailand for the podcast. The first interview lasted nearly 12 hours, but was not enough to flesh out the entire story. Subsequent interviews over Zoom were conducted in order to produce the podcast.

That was how she ended up in Cambodia last year pursuing the story of Micah and Ava. Broke and desperate after two years of lockdown, Ava was offered a job in Cambodia promising US$1,000 a month, with free room and board.

It was only when she arrived that she realised it was all a scam. She was taken captive in a walled compound with armed guards, and forced to run cyber scams by a criminal network.

Despite being warned not to follow her, Micah did in hopes of rescuing her. He ended up being imprisoned in the same scam compound.

Even though the couple had access to the Internet and other forms of communication, they could not ask for help as all their communication was monitored. Any attempt to warn scam victims or seek help would be met with cruel punishment.

“They saw two men beaten with dumbbells. It was extremely violent. Their eyes bulged out and they were on the floor. People who caused trouble were made an example of (through) torture, abuse, starvation, even murder,” said Lydia.

Stirring up empathy with stories

Online scams is a massive problem. According to a joint study by non-profit organisation Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) and data service provider ScamAdviser, scammers stole an estimated S$1.4 trillion worldwide between August 2022 and August 2023 alone.

In Singapore, the total amount lost to scams was S$1.1 billion in 2024, a 70% increase from the year before.

The Fight of My Life: Escaping Scam City does not just want to expose the magnitude of the crime. It hopes to create awareness about the hundreds of thousands from all over Asia who have been trafficked and forced to work in scam farms.

The podcast was one year in the making. Said Lydia: “We didn’t want to rush the story given the depth of Micah and Ava’s journey, as well as the ongoing and changing landscape of forced scamming.”

“A lot of people are not aware that the scammers themselves are trafficked. When they hear that, it changes the way they think about people sending them text messages and calling them. We want to stir up empathy for these people,” said Lydia.

She is looking to tell more stories so that help and hope can be offered to those used and abused.

“Storytelling is a biblical and beautiful way of bringing heart to complicated issues. Jesus uses parables. In the Old Testament, when God sent Nathan to rebuke David, Nathan used a story to get David to confront his sin (2 Samuel 12:7-13),” said Lydia.

She added: “I always go back to Scripture when I do all this. Jesus was a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3). So many times I ask, ‘Am I done? Why am I being involved with these strangers?’

“But God is not distant. He reached out to people. We have the ultimate hope that when He comes back, He will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4).”

RELATED STORIES:

Tricked into online sex trafficking at 16, she now forgives her perpetrators and fights for others like her

“He had a bigger plan all along”: She landed her dream job in TikTok, but not before wrestling with God

Trafficked to Singapore at 14 as a sex worker, she shares how she found hope in despair

“Life is bad but there is hope in Jesus. Don’t give up”: Trafficked at three, she now wants to bring hope to other enslaved children