U.S. AND MEXICAN AUTHORITIES TO VICTIMS OF ONLINE PREDATORS: YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN

By Juan Montoya
A little more than a month ago, the parents of a 14-year-old girl started noticing that their daughter had stopped venturing outside her room, never mind her home.
Family functions didn't interest her.
Not versed in the functions of cell-phone use or computer literate, they paid no attention to her growing reliance on texting hours on end.

Then, one day as she prepared to leave for school in the morning, her elderly mother noticed she had left earlier than usual and was carrying a bag with her when she left the house. She noticed the school bus arriving and leaving and noticed that her daughter had not gotten on it.

Alarmed, she went to the school to investigate. She (we'll call her Lupe) had not been on the bus and was not in school.

Days passed and Lupe would not answer her phone. After a few weeks, she got in touch with her cousins and told them to relay the message to her parents that she was fine and was deep in in Mexico with a "boy" she had met online and had been in continual contact with for weeks before she left.

He had told her he was 17, but later the family found out that "Juan" was really 19 years old. He had convinced her to pack her bags and to wait for him so that when he drove through Brownsville from North Carolina where he worked illegally he would pick her up and they would go live together happily in Mexico. Her convinced her he loved her madly.
When her parents found out, they were desperate and horrified that Lupe – only 14 – would be at the mercy of the man who had taken her with him. The frantic mother thought of the worse: sexual abuse, white slavery, perhaps even murder. Perhaps she was already pregnant.

The father, a traditional older Mexican man, felt the honor of his household betrayed not only by the predator, but by his daughter. Her mother, fearful that she would be hurt or even killed, contacted the Brownsville Police Department, the U.S. and Mexican consuls, and every law enforcement agency she could think of.

In every instance, she was told there was little they could do.
The girl was with her captor in the interior of Mexico and the U.S. consul said that prevented them from actively getting involved in the matter. The Mexican consul said they could only pass on the information to the Mexican authorities and to wait for a response. Their office was more concerned with providing services to Mexican citizens in the United States.

And besides, it sounded to them like she hadn't been taken by force and was there because she wanted to be there.

After more than a month of waiting, nothing happened.

Then, finally, her mother and a daughter decided to take matters into their own hands and board a bus that took them into Mexico, then on a smaller bus line that took them to the rural rancho where their daughter was staying with the man's family.

On Monday they got on the bus in Matamoros, went to the ranch and talked to the man's family and got their daughter and sister back. After a long bus ride back, they finally crossed the Gateway Bridge and got the girl into U.S. soil Wednesday afternoon.

What was the response from U.S. authorities?

"When the mother and her older sister got to the bridge her name came up on the computer and the Brownsville police were called," said a source close to the family. "After more than a month of doing nothing about the case, the federal officers called the Brownsville police who got to the bridge, handcuffed the girl as her crying mother pleaded with them and tried to explain that she was her daughter, then loaded her up in the back of the police car and took her to the station."

The child is now back at home. The family still doesn't know whether she will suffer any lasting effects from her days in captivity, or from the whole experience being deceived by an older man.

Now they'll have to add the reception and treatment of the girl at the hands of immigration (Customs) and the Brownsville Police Department to the list and know better than to call them if the need (Dios favoresca!) should ever arise again.