Mexican woman tells of ordeal with cross-border child traffickers

[Joanne98]

In interview with Channel 4 News, young woman says babies and young children are 'sold to order' to US nationals

A young Mexican woman who escaped from human traffickers has told US special agents how she witnessed babies and children being "sold to order" to US citizens.

America's Department of Homeland Security in Washington says the girl, known only as Maria, had "significant ~information" and possessed a "remarkable memory" of her experiences inside the gang.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, to be broadcast tonight, the teenager tells of a cross-border trade in babies and young children, where Mexican and US gangs worked together to supply a demand in the United States.

As a result of the interview, US officials and Mexican authorities have begun an investigation into the alleged trafficking.

Maria says she was 16 when she was lured into the gang by a man on the streets of the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez.

Since the 1990s, thousands of women have disappeared from the town. Hundreds of bodies bearing signs of rape and sexual mutilation have been dumped on waste ground in the city; thousands more have never returned.

In 2009, 55 teenage girls vanished in the town, which has been gripped by violence as two drug cartels fight a lethal turf war over cocaine smuggling routes into the US.

Maria, who was in hiding when she talked to Channel 4 News, said she had been given presents and promised a job in an office by the gang member but was instead drugged and raped and sold to men.

In late December, US special agents flew the teenager to the US for a full interview.

Describing what the gang did to one girl who tried to escape, she said: "They took a gallon of gasoline and started pouring it over her. One of the men told me, 'If you don't do as I say, I will do the same to you.' I wanted to look away – but they didn't' let me.

"Even though the girl was on fire, they kept hitting her. They were laughing as if they were enjoying what they were doing. They burned her alive."

Maria, which is not her real name, said the gang had held young women in a house on the Mexican border until they were sold to the US as sex slaves. But she said they also dealt in children, and told of one occasion when the gang was contacted by a woman in New York. "She said she needed a seven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy – and she needed them in three days," Maria quoted the woman as saying.

Maria told special agents the gang would prowl the streets of poor areas looking for children.

"They stole the children," she said. "One of the gang members took a six-year-old kid. I had to look after him for three hours. He told me he wanted to see his mummy. Then I started crying. I said: 'I don't think you're ever going to see your mummy again.' All he kept saying was, 'I want to see my mummy.'"

Continued>>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/11/mexican-woman-border-child-traffic

[SteveM]

1. All courtesy of the War on Drugs, Inc.

Once you set up a regime of prohibition on substances very much in demand by tens of millions of people, then the gangs, cartels, etc. will construct a massive business model to both get around and corrupt the laws. Once that business model is in place, it can and WILL set up shop to service other illegal enterprises, using the same procedures. We have an Afghanistan on our border, but still righteously proclaim we are not "soft on drugs." We have learned little from our experience with alcohol prohibition except increased moral rigidity, as signified in "zero tolerance" policies.

In mechanics, "zero tolerance" is equated to "nothing works."

[Soylent Brice]

2. that's fucked up and sad.

[winyanstaz]

3. The punishment for crimes against children should be the most severe of all.

A child rapist, molester..kidnapper..should NEVER be freed.
If our government really wanted to stop it..they would simply offer a large reward for turning a child molester or a rapist in and put those bastards away forever.
But when you have people like a certain former president having child prostitution parties in the whitehouse and it is all swept under the rug...it gives the green light to others.
All it takes for evil men to do great harm..is for good men to do nothing.
If the law would dredge the pond at Bohemian Grove I am sure they would find more than a few of those missing kids.

[Prometheus Bound]

4. 20,000 young women and children sold to Americans every year from Mexico alone!

"The US state department estimates that more than 20,000 young women and children are trafficked across the border from Mexico each year."