The Somaly Mam Foundation came into being in the United States in 2007. It was an outgrowth of Mam's highly fictionalised, best-selling "biography" called The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine. It was the sensational tale of an innocent young Khmer woman, raised during the Khmer Rouge days, sold into sexual slavery as a teenager. It told how she escaped the sordid life, and began an organisation dedicated to helping young girls caught in the life she had suffered.