The Civil Guard arrested the mother and stepfather of a 12-year-old minor whom they had just sold for the sum of 3,000 euros.
The girl was sold into forced marriage in the southern Spanish city of Granada.
The operation began at the end of January, when the authorities became aware of the presence of several minors in distress in the town of Malagón, located 150 km south of Madrid.
According to the agents' information, among these minors was a young girl who had declared to social services that she regularly suffered physical attacks from her mother and that she did not wish to stay at the family home.
Thanks to the investigations they carried out among the minor's entourage, the agents were able to discover that she had informed certain relatives that her parents were going to marry her for the sum of 3,000 euros.
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The agents also contacted social services and the minor's school where her three brothers also attend, and found that she was no longer going to school.
“The relationship with the school has been very close.
We asked for a report on the situation of the four brothers and sister, on class attendance, schooling, if they were with their classmates, what grades they had, if the relationship was normal,” explains Lieutenant Alejandra to the Spanish media ABC.
Obviously, the children were going to school and were somewhat lacking in attendance, but nothing to worry about 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 father-in-law's pockets
The next day, the police saw that the mother and stepfather showed up at the school to let the establishment know that the young girl would never return to class, because she was returning to Romania with her grandmother. mother.
“We knew it wasn't true and the same day we arrested them,” the lieutenant said.
Arrested with 3,800 euros in cash in his pockets, the father-in-law claims that he earned this money during the last olive harvest campaign, 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 will be found in another Romanian family with the man who was to be her future husband, a young man of 16 years old.
She will then be taken to the social services of Granada, under the supervision of the Junta of Andalusia.
The government of the Castile-La Mancha region condemned this “sexist event which has no place in a modern and democratic society” and congratulated the Guardia Civil “for preventing this forced marriage”.