Karla Jacinto is now raising awareness for sex slave victims (Picture: CNN)
A woman who was raped 43,000 times is now travelling the world to help other victims of sex trafficking.
Karla Jacinto was lured away from her dysfunctional family when she was just 12 by a trafficker who offered her money, gifts and the promise of a better life.
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By the age of 16, Ms Jacinto says she had been raped more than 43,000 times and was often forced to have sex with 30 different men a day.
Now 24, she is fighting back against Mexico’s human trafficking crisis, by raising awareness of how the criminals work so potential victims can spot red flags.
Karla Jacinto tells her story in a bid to end trafficking
Pope Francis talks with victims Anna Laura Perez Jaimes (R) and Karla Jacinto during the Modern Slavery and Climate Change conference at the Vatican (Picture: Reuters)
As part of her passionate activism, Ms Jacinto has even met with Pope Francis at the Vatican to discuss sexual slavery and human trafficking.
Recalling her harrowing experience, she told CNN: ‘They would beat me with sticks, they would beat me with cables, they would beat me with chains.
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‘There were people who would laugh at me because I was crying. I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see what they were doing to me.’
Ms Jacinto was rescued in 2008 as part of an anti-trafficking operation in Mexico City, where an estimated 20,000 women are victims of sex trafficking, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
More than 20 million people are thought to be trapped in some sort of modern slavery across the world today, according to End Slavery Now.
Over 4.5 million are estimated to be victims of sex trafficking.