Lydia Cacho

Lydia Cacho was born in Mexico City in 1963 to a French mother and a Mexican father. She settled in Cancún, Mexico in 1985, where she began working at the newspaper Novedades de Cancún. Cacho speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese and English.

She is an award-winning Mexican journalist, author, feminist, and human rights activist who has published hundreds of news articles, a poetry book, a novel, collections of essays on human rights and other nonfiction works. She has made it her life’s work to investigate sexual slavery. For her work she has been kidnapped, raped, tortured and been the target of death threats.

A fearless and courageous defender of the rights of women and children in Mexico, Cacho routinely risks her life to shelter women from abuse and challenge powerful government and business leaders who profit from child prostitution and pornography. Cacho is the founder of Ciam Cancún, a shelter for battered women and children. Her work with women and children in Mexico has been extremely effective in terms of rescue and rehabilitation of the countless individuals who seek assistance from the shelter.

She was the first woman to bring a case before Mexico’s Supreme Court following her imprisonment on defamation charges after the publication of her book, Demons of Eden, in which she investigates child sexual abuse and pedophilia rings. Amnesty International has recognised her work.