God turned something evil into a vehicle for an abused woman to find freedom and redemption.
This was the testimony of 34-year-old immigrant Rosa Castillo who was locked up in a cage and raped by sex traffickers for more than a decade before finally finding the chance to escape, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Castillo revealed that she endured 14 horrific years as a captive of a sex trafficker who she had thought would help reunite her in the U.S. with her family, who fled Nicaragua when a 28-year revolution broke out in the Central American country in 1962.
Instead, the sex trafficker abducted her in 1995 when she was just 12 years old and smuggled her back and forth between Mexico and the United States together with other women and children.
"I was always locked in a cage. They only fed us twice a week," Castillo told the Palm Beach Post.
She said she suffered more abuse from her captor after she tried to escape. She said the man continually raped her and even used her as his "personal ashtray."
That was the time when she prayed to God to just take her life away.
However, when she gave birth to a child after being impregnated by her captor, she regained her determination to find freedom.
"I decided I'm no longer praying for dying," she said. "I'm praying for freedom."
Finally, she found the chance to escape together with her young daughter. Her captors tried to stop her and fired shots, with a bullet grazing her forehead.
Fortunately she was rescued by a passerby who brought her to a hospital. Social service agencies moved Castillo and her daughter to West Palm Beach in 2008.
Hence, her baby, who she conceived after she was subjected to the evil act of rape, became God's vehicle for her to regain her freedom and achieve redemption.
Castillo said she is sharing her story in hopes of raising public awareness about human trafficking.
She said she is concerned for her daughter, who's now 13 years old. "I want to always be able to protect her and if this is one way to protect her and every child in America, I will speak," she said.
In its statement to the UN Security Council on modern slavery on March 15, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that today there are 20.9 million people who are victims of forced labour. "This represents about three in every 1,000 of today's world population," it says.
Of this number, 68 percent are victims of forced labour exploitation while 22 percent are victims of forced sexual exploitation.
The ILO estimates that traffickers earned profits of more $150 billion annually through different forms of human trafficking.
