Authorities rescued 500 children from a shelter in western Mexico where the children were reportedly living in filthy, bug-infested conditions where rape and other forms of abuse were common. 

However, after the announcement of the raid, Mexico's former president and other public figures defended the elderly woman running the shelter, according to The Los Angeles Times. 

It is estimated that the 600 children and adults who lived in the La Gran Familia (The Big Family) group home in Zamora, Michoacan, which is 250 miles west of the capital, lived in squalid conditions. 

Images displayed on Mexican television Thursday showed crowded bedrooms filled with trash and a filthy kitchen with rotten food and insects. Residents also reported between raped, beaten and held against their will for years. 

However, some said the shelter offered them protection and even saved their lives. 

"There is testimony [about abuse] that really hurts, that makes you angry," Mexican federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said in a news conference. "But there are other statements from people who said they were protected and hidden ... statements about people who really became protectors of the children."

There is currently a government investigation under way to find out who was abused and who was actually being protected. 

The investigation into Gran Familia began when a number of families said they were being denied access to seeing their children, who were sent to the home because of behavioral issues. Some of the other children were previously homeless and were given shelter in the home. 

Authorities said that 154 girls, 278 boys, six babies, 50 women and 109 men were freed from the shelter, and the home's director and staff members were taken into custody by police. 

Journalist Lydia Cacho, who has been dedicated to exposing and helping stop sex trafficking and child abuse, curiously defended the shelter's founder, Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, or "Mama Rosa," who is 79. 

Cacho said that Verduzco provided shelter, food, education and even music lessons to around 6,000 orphans and abandoned children. However, she said Verduzco had charitable, not administrative skills, and that the economic recession had taken a toll on the home. 

"Rosa del Carmen was exhausted, and like others who try to save children trapped between a narco-trafficking culture and the impunity of family violence, she ended up isolated and without resources," Cacho wrote in a column Thursday.

"The lesson here is Mexico has to protect and take care of its girls, boys and youths," she wrote. "We cannot continue to ignore a humanitarian tragedy."

Former President Vicente Fox also came out in support of Verduzco. 

However, prosecutors said the abuse in the home was brutal. 

Tomas Zeron, head of criminal investigations for the attorney general's office, said some of the residents of the home were forced into sex or denied water and food as a form of punishment. One woman said she had been held against her will since she was 18 and was raped and impregnated by a home administrator, who then induced a miscarriage by beating her. Zeron also said that two boys said they were forced to preform oral sex on a different administrator. 

Marches were held in Zamora Thursday both in support of and against Verduzco. 

An investigation into the shelter is ongoing.