The Guardia Civil arrested the mother and stepfather of a 12-year-old minor whom they had just sold for 3,000 euros. The girl was sold into forced marriage in the southern Spanish city of Granada.
The operation began in late January when authorities became aware of the presence of several minors in distress in the city of Malagón, 150 km south of Madrid. According to investigators, the minors included a young girl who told the social welfare office that she regularly suffered physical attacks from her mother and did not want to stay in the family home.
Thanks to the investigation into the minor's environment, investigators were able to find out that she had told certain relatives that her parents would marry her for 3,000 euros.
Agents also contacted social services and the minor's school, where her three brothers also attend, and discovered that she was no longer attending school. “The relationship with the school was very close. “We asked for a report on the situation of the four brothers and sisters, about attending classes, going to school, whether they were with their classmates, what grades they had, whether the relationship was normal,” Lieutenant Alejandra explains to Spanish ABC Media Group.
Apparently the children were attending school and were a little under-attended, but that wasn't a cause for concern until the center alerted them that none of the four had been at school for several days in a row.
3,800 euros found in the father-in-law's pockets
The next day, police saw that the mother and stepfather showed up at the school to inform the institution that the young girl would never return to class as she was returning to Romania with her grandmother. “We knew it wasn’t true and arrested them that same day,” the lieutenant said.
The father-in-law, arrested with 3,800 euros in cash in his pocket, claims that he earned this money during the last olive harvest, but the agents quickly had confirmation that this statement was false.
The parents then quickly indicate where the young girl is, in Granada, where she is found in another Romanian family with the man who was to be her future husband, a young man of 16 years old. She is then taken to the Granada social welfare office under the supervision of the Junta of Andalusia.
The government of the Castile-La Mancha region condemned this “sexist event that has no place in a modern and democratic society” and congratulated the Civil Guard “for preventing this forced marriage.”