To 15-year-old Wendy, the two well-dressed men who approached her and her two friends at their middle school in the small Honduran village of El Gancho seemed like legitimate businessman: They appeared wealthy, drove a nice car, and carried business cards. When the pair offered to take the three girls to America to work in a textile factory, "I felt like I had won the lottery," Wendy says.
Wendy had long dreamed of helping her single mother support the seven children in their family. When her mother warned against going with the businessmen, Wendy told her not worry. "When I come back, I will buy you a car," she told her mother, so that she would no longer have to walk 22 miles to her job in a pineapple field.
In 2002, Wendy and her friends, 15-year-old Sujeli and 14-year-old Ana, embarked upon a journey that would turn into a daily nightmare of being kidnapped, beaten, raped and forced to work in brothels servicing six to 10 men a night. Wendy says she worked alongside girls as young as 12 who were given daily beatings if they did not make enough money for their captors.
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