13 year old girl rescued from prostitution ring in Malaysia

A teenage Thai girl applied for a job on a social media site promising a minimum of 20,000 baht a month salary. The 13 year old girl was then forced into prostitution in Malaysia. Yesterday, she was returned to Thailand with the help of the Human Trafficking Prevention and Suppression Division in Thailand and the police in Malaysia.

Police broke up a human trafficking ring that would import young girls into Malaysia and force them into prostitution. They arrested five members of the gang and rescued four women. Two of the victims were from Indonesia while the other two, including the 13 year old girl, were Thai.

Three members of the human trafficking ring fled back to Malaysia to avoid capture but were rounded up by Malaysian police there. One of the suspects was captured and taken into custody in Chon Buri. The last suspect was picked up in Chachoengsao province. They’ve been charged with nine offences and, if convicted, could face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

The 13 year old girl saw a promising ad on social media for a job and applied online. The human traffickers then contacted the girl to offer her a job in Malaysia where she was told she would be working in a massage parlour. The gang told her that her salary would start at 20,000 baht and could be as high as 200,000 baht per month.

She accepted the lucrative job offer and travelled to the Malaysian border in the Deep South province of Narathiwat. There, human traffickers on both sides of the border smuggled the teen girl across a natural crossing in Su-Ngai Kolok District and into Malaysia.

Once she arrived in Malaysia, the teen girl found she would not be giving massages and was forced into prostitution. The young girl’s mother figured out the ruse and contacted the Central Investigation Bureau. The bureau’s commissioner confirmed today that they set straight to work on rescuing the girl.

According to Thai PBS World, they contacted the Department of Consular Affairs under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work together to find, free, and return the trafficked teenage girl to her family, along with rescuing the three other women held by the traffickers.