Dad dragged off plane for ‘sex trafficking’ his 3-year-old daughter
A man and his 3-year-old daughter on a United Airlines flight to the US from Mexico were taken from the plane. A passenger saw the pair and wrongly assumed the man was sex trafficking the child. The man was carrying his and her passports and a legal letter from the child’s mother giving her approval for the trip. But one passenger thought they looked iffy.
The child’s mother, high school teacher Maura Furfey, tells The Huffington Post:
After our 3-year-old snoozed on her father’s lap for most of the flight, the plane landed. He texted me to tell me they had arrived. When the plane taxied to the gate, however, a number of officers from the Port Authority and Customs and Border Patrol boarded the plane, approached my husband and instructed him to grab his carry-ons and follow them. He and our daughter were escorted out of the plane before anyone else could get off.
Once out of the plane, four officers from Port Authority and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) surrounded them. They fired so many questions at him that he didn’t know who was asking what. He had no idea what was going on. Our daughter started to cry in all of the commotion.
After asking about where our daughter was born, who was there, and where her birth certificate had been issued, they asked for my phone number; that was when they called me, asking me the same questions in order to verify the story. At that point they seemed satisfied that my husband was not, in fact, trafficking our daughter. They then told me that this accusation was not coming from the CBP, who were trained to identify these kind of situations, but from a passenger on the plane. They were following protocol to act on reported suspicions such as this.
…also forced to work as domestic servants, drug mules, in sweatshops and restaurants, or as beggars or pickpockets. The case of ‘Adam’, the Nigerian boy’s torso found in the River Thames, raised concerns that trafficked children are being used for ritual killing.
And very soon murder is linked to fostering and families seeking better lives for their children:
Between 8,000 and 10,000 children, many from West Africa, are being privately fostered in the UK. Many could be being abused or exploited, without anyone even knowing that they are in the country.
It all sounds horrific. But the facts are unclear. Nonetheless UNICEF still manages to come up with a number:
Worldwide, over a million children are trafficked each year.
But that’s not a fact. It’s a guess.
UNICEF is working internationally to prevent child exploitation from happening in the first place, but legislation is needed to deal with the crime once committed and to act as a deterrent.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 24th, April 2017 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
