A married couple from Nisporeni were sentenced to 12 and, respectively, 13 years in prison for making a teenage girl beg in the Russian Federation. The defendants persuaded the girl’s mother to give them the teen’s passport and her consent by proxy for the girl to to travel with them outside the country, IPN reports.

The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases said that it happened in 2010 - 2013. In the period, the couple traveled to Russia together with the girl for three times. The couple first spoke to the mother of the teen who was due to turn 18 in a few months. The girl left her child in her mother’s care and went abroad in the hope of earning US$200 a month, as the couple promised to her.

Although they initially told her she would take care of disabled people, in reality she was forced to take one of these in a wheelchair to places where they begged. She was also forced to beg together with the accused man. It was established that the teenager was psychologically pressured and physically assaulted to continue begging when she refused to do so or if she did not give the two all the money in the evening. The couple kept the girl’s passport meanwhile.

When the girl turned 18, she returned to Moldova with both of the defendants. After this first departure, two more departures followed. The girl even set fire to her passport to be unable to go and beg, but the defendants persuaded her again to travel to Russia with them and gave her money to make a new passport. In a few months of the second departure to Russia, the illegal situation repeated. As the financial condition of the family was deplorable, the young woman became a victim of the defendants for the third time.

In 2016, the young woman learned that she had the right to file a complaint against the couple for the previously committed acts. The court not only sentenced the couple, aged 57 and 60, to imprisonment, but also ordered them to pay US$1,000 to the young woman.