How the Sex Trafficking Industry Is Evolving - Lydia Cacho September 3, 2010

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/05/21/Lydia_Cacho_Goes_Undercover_in_the_Global_Sex_Trade

Investigative journalist Lydia Cacho traces the increasing sophistication of sex traffickers, who she describes as having gone from simply abducting girls and women to "creating a pop culture of porn." She discusses the sex exploitation colony of 30,000 Dutch men in Cambodia, which she says authorities are aware of but do not combat.

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From going undercover dressed as a nun or pole dancer to speaking directly to child victims as young as four, Lydia Cacho has doggedly collected evidence of a rampant sex slave trade in Mexico. Its tentacles stretch from the mafia all the way up to some very high-ranking government officials. It's a quest that's seen her kidnapped, then imprisoned for her trouble...and still facing constant death threats.

Cacho's journey into this murky world started when she founded a high security shelter for battered and sexually-exploited women and children in the resort town of Cancun, where she lives.

Following in her mother's activist footsteps, her first attempts to raise the issue of violence against women were on a local radio show. After being visited by a group of women who begged for protection against their violent husbands, she went about finding a safe place for them. The Cancun shelter has now been running for 10 years.

Since then, Cacho has become a humanitarian "force of nature," regularly putting her life on the line in the name of social change. Her tales of adventure are grim and extreme, as she recounts surviving abduction, jail and torture by state agents, before garnering protection from the likes of Amnesty International and the authors group PEN.

In this riveting session from the Sydney Writers Festival, Cacho says taking on the sex traffickers of Mexico wasn't something she chose, it happened more accidentally. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Lydia Cacho is a journalist, author and feminist activist against violence. She founded a high-security shelter for battered and sexually exploited women and children. Cacho is the first woman in Mexican history to have taken to trial an organized crime ring of child pornography, sexual tourism and women's trafficking. Currently she is a columnist on "El Universal," and a workshop teacher on successful approaches to help trafficking victims. Her new book is Slaves of Power: A World Map of Sex Traffickers.