"I Was Raped 43, 200 Times".

Human trafficking is real, and it is an on-going problem, right here in North America no less. Read this:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/73991762/mexican-sex-slave-karla-jacinto-i-was-raped-43200-times

Karla Jacinto's early teenage years have been reduced to a figure that now haunts her: 43,200.

It's the staggering and horrifying number of times the now 23-year-old estimates she has been raped.

Jacinto was just 12 when she was lured away from her home in Mexico City by a sex trafficker aged in his early 20s, who at first showered her with gifts, before forcing her into prostitution.


Jacinto addressed the US House Foreign Affairs Sub Committee on Global Human Rights this year.



"He started telling me everything I had to do; the positions, how much I need to charge, the things I had to do with the client and for how long, how I was to treat them and how I had to talk to them so that they would give me more money," Jacinto told CNN.

She fell into the hands of a human trafficking and prostitution ring, which is thought to have links to major cities in the US, including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Miami.

HEARTBREAKING

For the best part of four years, she was forced to have sex with about 30 men a day, seven days a week, allowing her to add up the heartbreaking number of times she had been raped.

She said she was sent to brothels, motels, streets known for prostitution and even homes where she was abused. Her pimps beat her with chains, punched her and burnt her with an iron.

"I told [one pimp] I wanted to leave and he was accusing me of falling in love with a customer. He told me I like being a whore," she said.

"I started at 10am and finished at midnight," Jacinto told CNN.

"Some men would laugh at me because I was crying. I had to close my eyes so that I wouldn't see what they were doing to me, so that I wouldn't feel anything."


While in captivity, Jacinto said she became pregnant and gave birth to a girl, who was taken away from her for more than a year.

Her devastating story is not unique, say US and Mexican authorities, who have traced the hub of the human trafficking ring to the area around the Mexican town of Tenancingo, about 130 kilometres east of Mexico City.

One Mexican charity told the BBC that it estimated there were 1000 traffickers in Tenancingo, out of a population of about 10,000.

Trafficking networks there are the biggest source of sex slaves in the US, the US State Department has said.

INDUSTRY

Susan Coppedge, the US State Department's Ambassador at Large to Combat Human trafficking, told CNN: "That's what the town does, that's their industry."

Jacinto was freed from the prostitution ring during an anti-trafficking operation in 2008.

She has since campaigned to raise awareness of human trafficking and sex slavery, this year attending a conference at the Vatican where she met Pope Francis and spoke of her experience.

She also addressed the US House Foreign Affairs Sub Committee on Global Human Rights this year.

"These minors are being abducted, lured, and yanked away from their families. Don't just listen to me. You need to learn about what happened to me and take the blindfold off your eyes," she told CNN.