Lydia Cacho is a journalist, writer, and activist born in Mexico in 1963. She became a journalist as a young woman and growing up she had parents who I believe encouraged her question things and to champion the rights of women. She began reporting on individual cases of violence against women. Sexual assault, rape, and murder. This lead to discovering a much larger problem at hand and beginning to expose individuals and those in power who either condoned it, ignored it, or were complicit. Because of her reporting she herself was sexually assaulted. But kept going and helped found a center in Mexico for women who were the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
She kept investigating in her own country and later internationally. She was the first woman in Mexico’s history to take a case implicating mayors, district attorney’s, and other powerful people to trial. This charged that these folks were protecting this the sex trade, sexual tourism, child pornography, and violence against young women. And many were connected to trafficking in other parts of the world. She wrote about this in articles and eventually in books such as Slavery Inc-the untold story of international sex trafficking, Los Demonios de Eden, and many others.
Having been spent time all over the world investigating these instances of abuse, being attacked, threatened, jailed, and awarded several international journalism awards she has become a shining example of how journalists can uncover the truth. But they must be protected. Journalists who get too close or speak truth to power are being threatened and murdered constantly in Mexico and worldwide. Follow her work!
Sources: LydiaCacho.net, Gesprek Op 2,
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