The women vanishing without a trace
Elizabeth realised something was terribly wrong within 15 minutes of her teenage daughter, Karen, disappearing. She had gone to the public toilets with nothing – no money, no mobile phone, and no change of clothes. Elizabeth searched the streets and called friends and family but no one had seen her.
Karen disappeared in April 2013 when she was 14 - one of thousands of girls to have gone missing in recent years in Mexico City, the capital of Mexico. A staggering 1,238 women and girls were reported missing in 2011 and 2012 - the most recent figures available. Of these, more than half were girls under the age of 17.
Mexico City, where over a thousand women were reported missing in 2011 and 2012
No-one knows how many have been found dead or alive, or are still missing. This is the most dangerous Mexican state to be a woman - at least 2,228 were murdered here in the past decade.
Elizabeth reported her daughter missing after three hours of frantic searching. But in Mexico police will not open a missing person's file until someone has been gone for 72 hours, not even for a child. So, Elizabeth and her husband, Alejandro, started their own investigation, which began by going through their daughter's social network accounts.
Mexico City Cathedral
Said Elizabeth,
"We realised that she had a (Facebook) profile that we didn't know about, with more than 4,000 friends. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but there was one man who caught our attention.”
Added Alejandro,
"This man rang alarm bells. He'd been in contact with her a few days before she disappeared, and had given her a smartphone so they could stay in contact, and we hadn't known.”
Each year it's estimated that 20,000 people are trafficked in Mexico and authorities say a growing number are being targeted online.
Karen's family realised they didn't have long to stop her being taken out of the country. They put pressure on the police to issue an "amber alert", and plastered missing posters around Mexico City. They managed to get their daughter's case on television and radio news bulletins.
A growing number of women being trafficked are targeted online
Their tenacity paid off. Sixteen days after Karen disappeared, she was abandoned at a bus terminal. The publicity had spooked her trafficker who was planning to take her to New York. He has never been caught.
Since Karen's return, Elizabeth and Alejandro have helped reunite 21 desperate families with their children. But they have a folder full of photos of others, some as young as five, who remain missing.
Mexico City Police in riot gear
In July 2015, the governor of Mexican City finally admitted - after years of denial - that gender violence is a serious problem in some areas. He issued Mexico's first ever "gender alert”. This means police must investigate the causes of the high levels of gender violence and then introduce emergency and long-term measures to protect women and girls.
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
