What if while waiting in the doctor’s office for your monthly pregnancy checkup, you come across a man with who you think is his teenage daughter. Unwittingly, you overhear part of their conversation and you’re shocked to hear that the little girl is not in fact his daughter, but the mother of his baby. What would you do?
“Stop asking so many questions”
A man was arrested by authorities after he brought his pregnant ‘wife’ for a routine checkup in Xuzhou City Central Hospital, in East China’s Jiangsu Province. The catch? The man was 40-years-old, and his ‘wife’, 12. They were accompanied by another woman who claimed that she was the child’s mother-in-law.
Doctors were immediately suspicious since it was very obvious that the pregnant ‘wife’ was just a child. They tried asking the girl some questions, but they weren’t unable to get any answers since she doesn’t speak any mandarin. One hospital staff shared, “It’s obvious she is just a child, and certainly not anywhere near 20 years old.”
Apparently, they also angered the husband when they became suspicious of the child’s real age. He was quoted as saying “I took her here to be examined – just do your job. Stop asking so many questions.”
She might have been abducted at 12 years old
When the police officers arrived, they found that the girl didn’t have any Chinese ID or any other form of identification for that matter. Authorities think that she is a foreign national from Southeast Asia, but they haven’t concluded anything yet.
Investigators are also looking into the angle that she might have been abducted or bought by the man claiming to be her husband. This is due to the fact that the Chinese have had a history of purchasing Vietnamese ‘brides’ from across the border.
An investigation is currently ongoing regarding the matter.
The high price of human trafficking
Human trafficking is not an isolated problem. All countries suffer from different forms of this modern-day slavery. In most cases, women, both young and old, are sold into sexual slavery or sold as child brides. Traffickers usually trick them into thinking that they will be working regular jobs, but then they get stuck in a vicious cycle of psychological and physical abuse.
Protecting your family
The scary thing about human trafficking is that they also abduct children from the streets. That is why it it’s important to make sure that you and your family know how to keep themselves safe. Here are some tips that you should always keep in mind:
- Teach your kids to know the important phone numbers in case of an emergency
- Teach them not to let any strangers inside the home, especially if there are no adults at home
- Teach them not to trust any strangers, even if they say that you know them
- Make sure to establish trust as well as open communication between you and your kids
- Know where your children are at all times. It pays to nag your children for the sake of their safety
- Make sure to know the people around your children, especially if you think they might have a hidden motive
Sources: Metro,innocentsatrisk.org