Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, willfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade's hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism. This is an underground economy in which a sex slave can be bought for the price of a gun, but Cacho's powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity makes it impossible to ignore the terrible human cost of this lucrative exchange. Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the colossal scope of its enquiry, and for the tenacious bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.
Author
Lydia Cacho was born in Mexico City in 1963 to a French mother and a Mexican father. She settled in Cancún, Mexico in 1985, where she began working at the newspaper Novedades de Cancún. Cacho speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese and English. She is an award-winning Mexican journalist, author, feminist, and human rights activist who has published hundreds of news articles, a poetry book, a novel, collections of essays on human rights and other nonfiction works. She has made it her life’s work to investigate sexual slavery. For her work she has been kidnapped, raped, tortured and been the target of death threats. A fearless and courageous defender of the rights of women and children in Mexico, Cacho routinely risks her life to shelter women from abuse and challenge powerful government and business leaders who profit from child prostitution and pornography. Cacho is the founder of Ciam Cancún, a shelter for battered women and children. Her work with women and children in Mexico has been extremely effective in terms of rescue and rehabilitation of the countless individuals who seek assistance from the shelter. She was the first woman to bring a case before Mexico’s Supreme Court following her imprisonment on defamation charges after the publication of her book, Demons of Eden, in which she investigates child sexual abuse and pedophilia rings. Amnesty International has recognised her work.
