There are many bizarre (and well-authenticated) tales from the world of white slaving. One case was publicised at the trial of 1964 of three sisters of Mexico who, with immense brutality, ran a wholesale business of sex slavery. Girls were abducted – and then branded on the thigh or the breast with a red-hot iron; then they were locked up for months in tiny cells to break their spirits. When the girls were thought ready – through starvation, beating, and gross sexual exploitation – to satisfy any brothel frequenter they were sold to establishments in Mexico or elsewhere. Some girls were beaten to death; one was burned alive; some were buried or tied to a bed by means of barbed wire. At the ranch-house of the three sisters there was a makeshift crematorium in an oil-drum, in which the police discovered charred bones.