A Special Place In Hell

(CNN) -- The director of a battered women's shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was being held Wednesday on charges that she forced the women she cared for to commit sex acts with strangers, local authorities told CNN.

Authorities were also investigating if children who lived at the shelter -- some as young as 5 years old -- were forced into prostitution as well, Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for the state attorney general's office, told CNN.

Soledad Griensen Porras, 50, of Juarez was arrested Tuesday afternoon after one of the women in the shelter stopped police in the street asking for help, according to Adrian Sanchez, spokesman for the Juarez municipal police department.

"Our officers responded immediately and that's when they found the shelter, which had pretty much become a brothel," Sanchez said.

Officers found "several irregularities" at the shelter "as well as five other women...and eight children," Sanchez said.

The children had been beaten and had "chile put on their private parts" according to a press release from the Juarez municipal police department.

I am sickened to think of the number of women and children who found this instead of safety. This is like an infection, a disease that affects others and surely causes them to affect even more. If the kids weren't actually sold for sex they were at best tortured in a way that would forever affect their sexuality.

There's just not enough punishment for someone like this.