Marita Verón

María de los Angeles Verón (known as Marita Verón), 23, was kidnapped on April 3, 2002, from her home town in Tucumán province in the northwest of Argentina. She has still not been found. Evidence suggests that she was kidnapped by human traffickers in order to force her into prostitution, and may have been forcibly transported to either the Argentinian province of La Rioja or to Spain.

Marita's mother, Susana Trimarco, has run a tireless search to find her daughter. Her search has led to more than 20 women who were victims of trafficking. The Maria de los Angeles Foundation rescues and helps victims of trafficking. Because of this, over the years Verón's case has become a symbol of the fight against human trafficking in Argentina and most of South America.

Marita Verón had left the home of her mother on April 3, 2002, to keep a doctor's appointment, when, according to the description of a witness, she was kidnapped by people who got out of a red car. Three days later she was found by police in the area of La Ramada, over 30 kilometers away, wearing shoes with heels instead of the sneakers she had been wearing when she disappeared. It appeared that she had escaped from a sex party. Police left her on a bus that was headed to Tucumán, but she never reached her destination.

"April 3, 2002 was the saddest day of my life. I will never forget that day, as it was when my daughter's life was destroyed," Trimarco told the BBC. She and her husband Daniel, who died in 2010, asked at hospitals, and spoke to police and neighbours about Marita. No-one knew her whereabouts. Trimarco recounted, "We walked back and forth to hospitals, streets; we talked with her girlfriends. Nothing. I was desperate. At the police station, they didn't want to take our report; they said she had gone voluntarily with a boyfriend or with her girlfriends. Then they said they had no paper to take down a report, or gas to go out and look for her in a car."

A number of days later a witness came forward and reported seeing Marita being pushed into a red car by three men. Three weeks later a prostitute told her parents that she had been 'sold' to traffickers.

With little support from the police, Marita's parents conducted their own investigation, which soon led to enough evidence to allow the police to raid a number of suspected brothels where her daughter could have been being held. The suspected brothels, in La Rioja, called themselves cabarets or whiskey bars (whiskerías) and have since been called "places for the practice of prostitution where there is systematic recruitment of women, including by means of depriving them of liberty." The investigation identified three La Rioja whiskerías, "Candy," "El Candilejas" (The Limelight), and "El Desafío" (The Challenge), as fronts for prostitution.

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Wikipedia