Ties Between Elites and Child Sex Rings "Beyond Imagina

[biaothanatoi]

MEXICO: Ties Between Elites and Child Sex Rings "Beyond Imagination"
Diego Cevallos
Inter Press Service News Agency

MEXICO CITY, Sep 13 (IPS) - The complicity in Mexico between child sex rings and the political and business elites "goes beyond what we can even imagine," says activist Lydia Cacho, who faces death threats and was even thrown briefly into prison for revealing those ties in a book.

"What we have just seen is only the tip of the iceberg," Cacho told IPS, after the local media aired Tuesday recordings of telephone conversations between two prominent politicians and a hotel owner now in prison, and a wealthy local businessman.

The number of Mexican politicians and businessmen involved in child pornography and sex rings "would shock us if we knew the real extent of the phenomenon," said Cacho.

In one of the illegally taped conversations broadcast Tuesday, which apparently date back to 2004, the governor of the state of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Emilio Gamboa, head of the party's bloc in the lower house of Congress, can be heard talking on friendly terms with textile mogul Kamel Nacif.

Nacif, a Mexican of Lebanese origin, who in the obscenity-laced conversation can be heard asking Gamboa to block a gambling bill to be debated by Congress, is suing Cacho for libel.

In her 2004 book "Los demonios del Edén" (The Demons of Eden), Cacho -- who is a journalist and writer as well as the director of a women's shelter in Cancún -- links Nacif with Jean Succar, a Lebanese-born hotel owner who is in prison facing charges of arranging paedophile parties in that Mexican resort town.

In another of the anonymously recorded conservations leaked to the press and broadcast Tuesday, Nacif can be heard talking with Succar.

Succar, under arrest in Mexico since July, after he was extradited from the United States, can be heard asking Nacif for a seven million dollar loan to purchase a hotel in Cancún, to which Nacif responds in the affirmative.

Later, the two exchange information on "the girl from Miami," who they refer to as "putita" (little whore), and who they say they have paid 2,000 dollars. Succar asks Nacif when it would be best to bring the girl to Cancún, and the latter responds that "next week, you son of a b***h, but you bring her to fornicate."

In Cacho's book, Succar is identified as the head of a ring of adults who subjected underage girls to sexual abuse in Cancún, in which Nacif allegedly took part.

Succar was arrested in February 2004 in the United States on child abuse charges and was extradited to Mexico in July, where he also faces charges for money laundering and organised crime.

"Los demonios del Edén" contains the personal accounts of minors who talk about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of a ring in which prominent figures were allegedly involved. The youngsters describe how the hotel owner sexually abused them himself, set up a prostitution ring to allow others to abuse them, and photographed them in order to sell the pornographic images on the Internet.

A 2004 study by researcher Elena Azaola, which estimated that some 17,000 children under the age of 18 are victims of the sex trade in Mexico, is also based on interviews with minors who managed to escape, as well as visits to establishments where underage girls and boys are forced to work as prostitutes.

The two PRI politicians, Herrera and Gamboa, denied having any illegal ties with Nacif, and said they did not even know Succar. From their point of view, the airing of the tapped phone conversations was a low political blow aimed at their party.

The PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, came in third in the Jul. 2 presidential and legislative elections.

Gamboa is one of the lawmakers who have approached Felipe Calderón of the conservative governing National Action Party (PAN) over the last few days, since he was confirmed as president-elect by the electoral court.

Javier González, a leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) legislators, said the leaked conversations between Nacif and the PRI politicians showed that the political system "is rotten."

The PRD argues that its candidate, Andrés López Obrador, lost the elections to Calderón because of fraud.

Cacho agrees that corruption is rife. "Many businessmen like Nacif have amassed huge fortunes in exchange for dark favours to politicians."

So far, no direct link between politicians or prominent businessmen and child porn or sex rings has been proven. But there are suspicions, which are fuelled by Nacif and his web of contacts.

Cacho, who has been under police protection since last year, when she began to receive death threats, was referred to in earlier leaked conversations, between Nacif and Mario Marín, governor of the state of Puebla, near the capital.

In the tapped conversations, Marín, a member of the PRI, can be heard telling Nacif that "I just gave a bump on the head to that old witch."

The two men also discussed how they had the activist arrested and thrown into a cell with "nutcases and dykes (lesbians)," so that she would be raped -- something that did not occur, because in the prison, "the prisoners themselves and the guards protected me," the writer said in an earlier conversation with IPS.

The tapes, which were sent to the press anonymously and broadcast in February, were apparently recorded in December 2005, after Cacho was thrown into jail for 30 hours, after a grueling 20-hour drive from her home in Cancún to Puebla.

The activist was arrested in connection with the libel suit brought against her by Nacif.

But when the news of her arrest broke, the rights watchdog Amnesty International, the World Organisation Against Torture, the Inter-American Press Association and other international groups raised an outcry, and Cacho was released on bail.

After the scandal triggered by the leaked phone conversations in February, in which the governor of Puebla and Nacif -- who owns factories in that state -- are heard discussing actions to teach Cacho a lesson, the Supreme Court initiated an investigation to determine whether or not Marín had engaged in criminal activity. (END/2006)

[Jeff]

Thanks for posting this. I touched on this story in this blog post:


Nacif, as his friend Succar, is a Lebanese emigre with a nasty reputation that long precedes the publication of Cacho's book. Mexico's "King of Denim" has "the unsavory habit of frequently changing the name of his many companies, in order to avoid paying debts, taxes and accumulated worker benefits to those laid off." And six years ago the Sun Herald wrote that "Mexican textile magnate Kamel Nacif has been a familiar face at Las Vegas gambling tables for some 30 years, using phony identification to wager at Caesars Palace when he was still in his late teens. He remains, however, a bit of a multimillionaire mystery man, long suspected by Nevada Gaming Control Board agents of money laundering and arms and narcotics dealing."

(Coincidentally, it was an expat Lebanese crime family operating in the Caribbean Basin that FBI undercover operative Darlene Novinger was investigating in 1982, when she reportedly, and unfortunately, discovered the Bush family implicated in its narcotics trade.)

[Gouda]

I recently saw London to Brighton (Trailer), the debut film by Paul Andrew Williams which offers a limited glimpse into the horrid world of elite pedophilia. A friend I was with said afterwards: "This must be quite common if they are making so many films about it..." I was like, as the IPS headline says, it is "Beyond Imagination", so to speak.

[pepsified thinker]

This NYT Magazine article has gives a lot of gritty detail about this--not so much of a pedophile focus as a 'young women' (teen girls) focus, if that's a distinction we're willing to make.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magaz ... 1390366800[url]

(disclaimer: I read the article when it first came out, but not since then--just looked it over quickly to see if it was the one I remembered--so I'm not standing behind it in any particlular way). [/url]

[Crow]

Apparently many New York Times readers had trouble accepting that something so horrific and heartbreaking could be true.

At the end of the article are several "corrections," including this one:

After the article was published, the writer made an impromptu comment in a radio interview, noting that Andrea has multiple-personality disorder. The magazine editors did not learn of her illness before publication. Andrea's account of her years in slavery remained consistent over two and a half years of psychotherapy. Her therapist says that her illness has no effect on the accuracy of her memory. Her hours-long interview with the author, recorded on tape, is lucid and consistent.

An independent expert consulted by the magazine, Dr. Leonard Shengold, who has written books and papers about child abuse and the reliability and unreliability of memory, affirms that a diagnosis of multiple-personality disorder is not inconsistent with accurate memories of childhood abuse. Because multiple-personality disorder has been associated with false memory, however, the diagnosis should have been cited in the article.

Of course she has multiple personalities. It would be more surprising to me if one of these victims did not. And how should having MPD/DID affect her credibility?

I am astonished that, as a society, we are still so ignorant about abuse and its effects.

[biaothanatoi]

I would stake a lot of money on it that the NYT was contacted by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation - promping the NYT went go to an independent expert to back up their story.

Interesting, isn't it, who is positioned as a reliable witness to their own lives, and who is not? It seems that the FMSF has carte blanch to cast doubt over the testimony of anyone with a trauma- or abuse-related illness.

At least the NYT made some kind of critical assessment of the FMSF in going to an expert clinician.

[blanc]

The complicity etc not just in Mexico. Thats the place we get to hear about and tut tut over.

[Joe Hillshoist]

The complicity etc not just in Mexico. Thats the place we get to hear about and tut tut over.

Sounds like the Northern territory.

[Stephen Morgan]

Anyone remember Lauriane? Her father was a Frenchie of Morrocan extraction, although his middle-name was Christian so I doubt he was a Muslim, and he rescued her from the clutches of her mother and the elite sex ring of Nice. He was granted asylum from France in the USA, and this was before the Iraq was kerfuffle. Then one day, with no warrant, a couple of US government agents turn up, kidnap the kid and stuff her onto a plane back to France. The father's still got asylum, I believe. Perv rings get everywhere.