Authorities in Mexico City have stated that a 22-year-old woman had been chained to an ironing station at a dry-cleaning shop and then forced to work in slave-like conditions for two years.

The woman, according to city prosecutors, managed to escape her confinement and alerted police who then raided the shop.

As reported in the Guardian, four women and one man who operated the store now face human trafficking charges for subjecting the young woman to forced labor. As relayed by the prosecutors, the woman had claimed that the owners of the shop chained her by the neck or the waist to a metal frame and then proceeded to beat her with a wrench, a rope and other objects, going so went so far as to burn her with an iron, if she stopped working.

Juana Camila Bautista, a prosecutor in the case, said, “When she leaned on the ironing board a little to rest, she was beaten.”

Detailing the alleged tortures, Bautista added that when the wounds healed up, “They scraped the scabs off, and they had her like this for two years.”

According to the woman, whose name was not released, when she first came by and asked for a job at the shop, she was given a place to live and was at the start treated well. The owners, however, eventually accused her of stealing and subsequently forced her to work with no compensation.

According to the woman,  she was allotted one small meal a day. In an effort to put an end to her hunger pangs, Bautista said that the girl “chewed the plastic they used to cover the garments.”

Once she escaped, it was noted that the woman was covered with scars and now suffers from a severe and potentially life-threatening anemia.

Authorities have placed her in a shelter for women that are at risk of violence.