Mother took daughter 9, to child prostitution ring

Three of the Four Panamanian women charged on Saturday, February 5, with the trafficking for the purpose of child sexual exploitation are in preventive detention. The other is under house arrest.

The court considered the provisional detention to ensure the process and the evidence. One of them aged  39, arrested on Friday in Veracruz, was alleged to have taken her 9 -year-old daughter to Cost Rica for prostitution.  The case is part of the results of Operation Light of Hope that dismantled a network, which was located between the border of Panama and Costa Rica, and where nine girls, between the ages of 4 to 12 years, were rescued.

The network “operated in the border sector. Two of the women apprehended were relatives of the victims and facilitated the entry and exit of minors from the national territory,” reported the First Superior prosecutor against Organized Crime, Emeldo Márquez. The prosecutor reported that after the apprehension of all the people who were the product of the Luz de Esperanza operation, the important formulation of the charge of human trafficking in its aggravated modality was given.

There are 12 minor victims, of which four have already been certified to have been sexually abused.