Seized: Inside the Brutal World of America’s Kidnapping Capital–PHOENIX ARIZONA

Adela Alvarado, the mother of kidnap victim Monica Alejandra Ramirez, holds a picture of her daughter.

Phoenix New Times, By Monica Alonzo, Thursday, Aug 12 2010
Maria was drifting off to sleep on the bedroom floor. She could hear women getting raped in the next room. Only she didn’t hear screams — she heard the laughter of male guards.

The women had been drugged by their rapists, who had done the same to Maria as soon as she walked into the house. They forced her to swallow a red liquid and handed her some chalky, white pills. She drank the liquid and tucked the pills on the side of her mouth, but they were slowly dissolving.

The drugs were beginning to deaden her senses.

Maria had arrived at the modest three-bedroom house in west Phoenix several days earlier in the back of a white van. She was one of about a dozen other immigrants who had hired coyotes to smuggle them into the United States in May. They each paid the human smugglers about $1,800 to guide them safely through the treacherous Arizona desert.

Their guides betrayed them. They delivered them to other coyotes, who were more vicious than their counterparts. The kidnappers demanded another $1,700 apiece for Maria and the 12 others, including two young boys, they were holding.

To read the complete article, click here:
Phoenix New Times