Violence, Power, and the Trivialization of Corruption
A journalist's battle to end a child sex trafficking ring shows what a corrupt court system really looks like.
In 2005, Lydia Cacho published Demons of Eden, which presented her reporting on an international child sex trafficking ring run by a wealthy Mexican businessman. That man was being protected by influential members of the Mexican government, several of whom continued trying to retaliate against her for her honest reporting.
Her 2016 memoir Infamy recounts the career she built through investigative journalism and building women’s aid shelters throughout Mexico. Both jobs led her to stories focused on preventing violence against women. One Mexican governor, Mario Villanueva, ordered her rape and beating at a truck stop in Guanajuato in retaliation for her work.
Demons of Eden was another milestone in her career. On top of the child sex trafficker abusing and sometimes disappearing children as young as five, politicians and businessmen were using girls as escorts at popular clubs.
Among the figures implicated in her book was businessman Kamel Nacif, who built a textile empire and bought politicians, judges, and journalists. His case against Cacho forms the backbone of her memoir.
The way he abused the justice system is not possible in the United States. However, aspects of his judicial strategy will be uncomfortably familiar to American readers.
Buying the Justice System
Nacif was a close accomplice of child sex trafficker Jean Succar Kuri. Succar Kuri procured children for him and Nacif to abuse.
Nacif’s business empire gave him the necessary resources to evade justice even after Cacho’s detailed reporting exposed his crimes. Nacif was able to order Cacho’s kidnapping and murder in December 2005.
The only reason Cacho survived was the security she had around her due to her work at her women’s aid shelters, which often had to shelter women from state police or cartel members. A web of journalists publicized Cacho’s arrest and disappearance enough that her arresting officer received a “change of plans” from Nacif.
However, Nacif was able to order her beating and rape in prison, a fate Cacho also narrowly escaped due to the publicity of her case and the human rights lawyers who flocked to her at the Puebla police station she was taken to.
Nacif and Succar Kuri also sued Cacho for defamation, setting off a years-long legal battle that left Cacho scrambling to pay her legal bills while child sex traffickers protected by the Mexican government walked free. Governor Mario Marin was found to be protecting both men, smearing Cacho and adding to her legal troubles.
Weaponizing Delays
One of the most outrageous aspects of the sex trafficking case was the recordings of Succar Kuri speaking bluntly about how he would abuse the girls he brought to his home. They were released publicly to the Mexican public and inspired widespread outrage.
Still, Nacif, Marin, and Succar Kuri were doing everything they could to avoid consequences for those actions. Cacho remembers:
“Each one of them individually threw the entirety of his legal resources into multiplying the number of summonses, psychological evaluations, and submissions of additional evidence I had to juggle. They were so good at it that on one particular week, I was under obligation to appear before courts in Cancun, Mexico City, and Puebla—all on the same day. Kamel [Nacif] had said it on one of the recordings: ‘I’m going to sue her over and over again, until she begs for forgiveness.’”
Adding unnecessary steps to the judicial process was an enormous burden on Cacho. It’s also a common tactic that wealthy abusers use to avoid consequences in court. They can afford to drag the legal process out until the victim is drained emotionally, financially, or both.
Judges in Mexico often work on behalf of the people bribing or threatening them instead of the people. It took an enormous toll on Cacho’s physical health as well, but Succar Kuri was eventually sentenced to 112 years in prison in 2011, six years after Demons of Eden’s publication.
Fighting is Not Glamorous
One of Cacho’s most hurtful moments came during a dinner with friends. An attendee of this dinner pointed out that Cacho’s international fame and awards must’ve given her a thrilling career.
What that friend missed was the toll the lawsuits against her took. Whether it was on her bank account or her physical health, she was mortified that a friend would look at her life as if it were a soap opera plot. She wrote in her journal that night:
“That idiotic Mexican capacity for the trivialization of serious matters like this one, like corruption, is what reinforces the dehumanization, lack of compassion, and mediocrity in which Mexico is mired. Everything becomes a joke in the end, a punchline, everything is eventually accepted as normal, its importance is downplayed, or denied, and then it disappears, dissolves away into our unwillingness to transform ourselves; I pity my country. I weep for myself and for those who have the power to change it but instead choose to perpetuate the status quo.”
Sexual violence occurs out of public view, which makes it easy for people who don’t want to confront it to ignore. Politicians in particular are often unwilling to uncover perpetrators in their circles for fear of a loss of influence or a crucial donor.
It’s also hard to look at Cacho’s frustration with the trivialization of her government’s corruption and not reflect on the ways our own leaders are letting us down by avoiding difficult issues. Cacho’s memoir is required reading for anyone remotely interested in politics or journalism.
But Infamy is also a call on each of us to reward leaders who make difficult choices instead of rewarding those who pander to us better than their peers.