The Catatumbo region, home to huge coca fields, has been ravaged by a fight for control between two armed groups
The rebels would come to the brothel every day, armed and masked. They would order the women to line up on their hands and knees, put their guns in their mouths, and rape them.
“It was ugly. A place filled with women and underage girls – all of us tricked and trapped,” recalled Valeria, 21, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. “The guerrillas came like they were there to kill.”
Valeria, like the dozens of other people she was held with, was trafficked to the brothel in north-east Colombia, in autumn last year. She had been offered a job in a restaurant, but on arrival was forced into prostitution and told that if she fled she would be killed. Two of those who tried to escape were shot dead as they ran, she said, while others who protested were taken away and never seen again.
The young mother is one of more than 150 girls and women aged from 11 to 50 who have escaped what they describe as “sexual slavery” by armed groups in Catatumbo in the past year.
