By Michael Martinez

She was the world's crusader against the trafficking of girls for sex in Cambodia, and she told an extraordinary personal tale: she was a village girl sold by a grandfatherly man into sex slavery.

Triumphant as well as beautiful, Somaly Mam won attention from Oprah Winfrey, a New York Times columnist, a PBS documentary, Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2009, and even CNN, which named her a "Hero" in 2007.

The fame - and her memoir "The Road of Lost Innocence" - generated millions of dollars for her Somaly Mam Foundation, fighting sex traffickers.

But her personal story wasn't true, according to a Newsweek exposé this month.