At age 17, Zunduri ran away with her boyfriend, according to CNN. Soon after, their relationship came to an abrupt end, which left her alone.  “Instead of returning home, she found food and shelter with a lady who owned a dry cleaning shop in the Mexican capital’s south side,” wrote CNN writer Rafael Romo.

Romo describes Zunduri as looking young, “She’s 23 years old, but her petite frame makes her look like a teenager. Her bright eyes and friendly smile can easily hide the horrors she has lived…” Some of these “horrors” are starvation, abuse, and rape, but it wasn’t always like that for Zunduri. She even says that when she first started staying with the dry cleaner and her family, she referred to the owner as “mom.” The longer Zunduri was with them, the more her workload increased, and the amount of food she was given decreased. CNN notes that the work she has done increased dramatically- starting at domestic house work. Then she would have ironing clothes for a few hours which eventually raised up to 20 hours a day of ironing clothes. With all of that work being given, she received less food; Zunduri ate the plastic bags that were used for laundered clothes and drank the water that was leftover from the irons.

Zunduri also states, “The first time she started kicking me. Then she said, ‘You have no right to talk back because I’m like a mother for you. If you call me ‘mother,’ you have to understand that mothers discipline their children…” After being repeatedly beaten, Zunduris captor left her in chains around her neck, which were then moved to her waist so she could continue to iron clothes. CNN also describes a time of torture done by the captors- they would iron Zunduri’s skin to burn her and then once it would scab, they would peel off the scabs so she would bleed. They would also burn her head, and take their fingernails and scratch her neck.

She was able to escape when her chains were left too loose. Upon her escape, police investigated the house where she was held and found seven more people, which were all related. According to  human rights attorney Maria Teresa Paredes, who was one of the first people to see her after her escape, “There was not a single part of her body without a scar or wound. She also had scratches and bruises. She had also lost a lot of hair.”

Now, Zunduri has been free for one year. She goes around the world telling people her story about her time in captivity. Zunduri even told her story to the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio and traveled to the Vatican last July to meet Pope Francis and explain to him what she encountered. Without holding anything back, Zunduri is open about sharing her story with anyone willing to listen.