Girl who hid out to avoid Pakistani arranged marriage is in protective custody
A 13-year-old Hesperia girl and three siblings were in protective custody Thursday morning after authorities discovered the girl holed up at a motel to avoid being taken to Pakistan for an arranged marriage.
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department officials said detectives found Jessie Marie Bender safe and in good condition in an Apple Valley motel, where she was being hidden by another family member.
Bender’s mother had told detectives that her daughter did not want to go on a two-month family trip to Pakistan and ran away. She later told police her daughter may have been abducted by someone she had been corresponding with on Facebook, triggering a massive search for the teenager that included local law enforcement, the FBI, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S.Marshals Service and detectives from the Los Angeles and Chicago police departments.
After combing through cellphone records and computer data and interviewing her friends and families, however, sheriff’s detectives found no evidence that her disappearance was related to her correspondence on Facebook and that the family’s initial reports were false.
“Bender family members misled detectives and withheld critical information and as a result delayed the investigation and recovery of their daughter Jesse Bender," sheriff’s spokeswoman Roxanne Walker said in a news release. “It was revealed that a member of the Bender family concealed Jess in the town of Apple Valley out of fear that she would be taken to Pakistan for an arranged marriage."
The investigation is ongoing and will be forwarded to the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office for review.
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Photo: KTLA News
EDITOR'S PICKS:
Wow. The family must have been paid. Slavery rears its ugly head in a new form.
Posted by: Yoga2010 | March 03, 2011 at 01:19 PM
Child brides shipped from Britain to Pakistan is a problem of EPIDEMIC proportions...but that almost always involves young girls of Pakistani heritage sent "home for vacation". Most never return...
What is chilling in this case is that this poor girl has NO MIDDLE EASTERN/SOUTH ASIAN ROOTS...
Posted by: Verballistic | March 04, 2011 at 12:57 PM
Fortunately this situation has a simple solution. Let the girl stay in the US while the mother goes to Pakistan.
As far as I am concerned, 2 months "visiting" in Pakistan is way too long for a 13 year old American girl. Especially considering how badly women are treated in Pakistan.
This is such a disgusting thing for the mother and step-father to plan for their daughter. The girl was lucky she had a relative who was willing to help her.
The problem of unwilling girls being forced into arranged marriages with abusive Pakistani men is an epidemic in Europe.
We certainly don't want to encourage or support it here in California.
Posted by: John Tompkins | March 05, 2011 at 08:12 AM
I think the mother and the father have to be blamed for this.
Posted by: john | March 06, 2011 at 03:31 AM