During the Central American civil wars throughout the 1980s, widespread sexual assaults of indigenous women were carried out, contributing greatly to the creation of the Mexican sex trafficking industry. Both policy and army personnel raped and assaulted several thousand poor, generally rural women during the El Salvadorean and Nicaraguan civil wars. Many of these women were shamed by their communities and families and chose to migrate to Mexico, leading to a boom in sex trafficking. As of 2014, this pattern of marginalization through sexual assault was still widespread.