A Mexican court has sentenced five different men to 697 years each in prison for the gender-based murders of at least 11 women in Chihuahua, Reuters reports.
Prosecutors say that between 2009 and 2011, the men responsible lured the young women into prostitution under the guise of getting legitimate jobs at a store one of the men owned. Instead, the women were forced to sell drugs and murdered when they were no longer "useful." The victims' bodies were discovered in 2012. According to the Latin Times, a sixth man has been arrested and is awaiting a separate trial. In addition to prison time — the longest sentence ever handed down against a femicide in Mexico — each man also has to pay $9 million pesos, or the equivalent of about $554,400, in damages to families of the victims.
Chihuahua, where the murders took place, is home to Ciudad Juarez, which, in 2008, recorded at least one missing woman per day. Al Jazeera reports that in 2012, an estimated 3,892 women were murdered in Mexico. Only 16 percent were investigated as femicides.
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