Six women and one man were arrested for allegedly trafficking a pregnant 20-year-old Cambodian woman across the border to work as a prostitute in a brothel in Thailand’s Trat province, police said Wednesday.
She was beaten until she miscarried her unborn child Aug 5, said Meng Say Phnom Penh Municipal Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Unit Police Chief.
The woman who ordered the beating “brought [the victim] to be aborted in order to work as a sex worker to pay the debt to the pimp,” Meng Say said. “This is a cross-border crime and too extreme, especially the killing of the baby.”
Two women were arrested Aug 27 in Phnom Penh and four women and a man were arrested in Koh Kong province Aug 28 in connection with the crime. The woman who ordered the abortion is still at large, Meng Say said.
The seven suspects were sent to the municipal court Tuesday for questioning but have not yet been charged. The victim and six other Khmer women and girls aged 17 to 20, all allegedly tricked into working in the Thai brothel in the past six months, are now in the care of the Phnom Penh Municipal Department of Social Affairs.