A Former Trafficking Victim Gets Her Life Back in Southern Mexico Amy Bracken - PRI’s The World
go to original July 1, 2017

Mona (L) is shown here with Elvira Gordillo Rivera in Rivera's garden in Comalapa, Mexico. Mona says Rivera enabled her to break free from her trafficker and is helping her move on with her life. (Amy Bracken/PRI)

You’ve heard about unaccompanied minors from Central America coming to the US. But many more of those youths fleeing violence and poverty stop short of our border, staying in Mexico. There, many lack any support and are vulnerable to exploitation, including sex trafficking.



In the last decade, Mexico has stepped up efforts to address the problem, busting traffickers and providing services for former victims. But post-trafficking, not everyone is able to move on with their lives.

Mona is an exception. She asked that I not use her real name because she's not proud of her story.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Mona’s 24 years on Earth had been good to her. When I meet her, she smiles easily and bounces around in bright white tennis shoes with pink laces.

Mona was just 16 when she left her family home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, out of what she calls youthful foolishness. She made her way through Guatemala to the mountain city of Frontera Comalapa, Mexico, where she quickly found a job waiting tables at a family restaurant — at least, that’s how the gig was pitched to her. In fact, it was a bar, and she was hired to keep male customers company, so they would buy more drinks and pay higher prices.

“It’s weird. It’s ugly, definitely,” is how Mona describes her experience there. “I can’t imagine someone saying, ‘Oh, I like working in the bar.’”

Read the rest at PRI's The World

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