's happened to them . '' Maria described how at the age of 16 she was lured off the streets by a young man who promised the world , but delivered nothing but pain . She was raped , drugged and sold for sex . `` They took a gallon of gasoline and started pouring it over a girl , '' Maria said . `` One of the men told me if you do n't do as I say I will do the same to you . `` I wanted to look away , but they did n't let me . Even though the girl was on fire they kept hitting her and they were laughing as if they were enjoying what they were doing . '' Maria described a cross-border trade in young children and babies -- with orders coming in regularly from the U.S. `` They stole the children and one of the gang members took a six-year-old kid that I had to look after for three hours . `` He told me he wanted to see his mummy then I started crying and said ' I do n't think you 're ever going to see your mummy
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Even before her 18th birthday , Maria had already been enslaved by a gang of human traffickers and held in captivity for four months in her homeland of Mexico . While a prisoner , Maria witnessed a sickening trade in human life and recalls how young girls were drugged , forced into prostitution and then murdered . What makes Maria 's story so special is that she was one of the lucky ones who were able to escape . Maria , whose real name we are n't using , used to live in the border town of Ciudad Juarez . The city is home to two drug cartels that fight a bloody turf war for lucrative smuggling routes to America . In a four-day period , 41 people were murdered , while over the past decade , 450 women were killed and 3,000 went missing . `` Today girls are still going missing but their bodies are never found , '' Miguel Perea , a local journalist told Britain 's Channel 4 . `` There 's no trace of them and their mothers and families of these girls -- they have n't got a clue what