Dubai, July 16: Two young sisters who were separated after their father’s mistress sold them into prostitution have been reunited after they traced each other through a pimp.
The two girls were born to a West African mother and a West European father who came to UAE more than a decade ago and divorced shortly after.
Dubai Police Combating Organised Crimes Department Director Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Rahim Bin Shafe’ei said the girls, then aged 11 and 14, were abandoned by their mother and forced into prostitution by their father’s mistress.
They were then sold from one brothel to another.
However Dubai Police said they rescued the teenagers, now aged 13 and 16, early last month.
They have been sheltered by the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children.
Police said two of those accused of forcing the girls into prostitution had been arrested, while three remained at large.
A red corner notice for their arrest had been issued against them through Interpol.
The case had also been referred to the public prosecutor, police said.
Investigations were continuing to find other suspects, Dubai Police Head of the Combating Human Trafficking Department Major Wesam Bin Darrai said.
Police said they acted on a tip-off that the girls had been locked up and forced into prostitution at a residential apartment in Bur Dubai, Lt Col Bin Shafe’ei said.
“It was not a regular case,” Lt Col Bin Shafe’ei said.
“What started as a check to see whether the information we received was correct turned out to have many twists. The story goes back to more than 10 years when the parents of these two innocent children divorced and neglected their duties as parents.”
Maj Bin Darrai said the mother had abandoned her two children when they were babies and to this day they had not heard from her, nor did they “actually remember anything about her”.
The father lived with his Asian girlfriend, who helped him raise the girls for several years in one of the emirates, Maj Bin Darrai said. The woman even registered the girls in a school.
“A fact that is still unclear to us is why the unemployed father abandoned his girls and left them to be raised by his girlfriend, who the girls call ‘mother’,” Maj Bin Darrai said.
Police said the father’s mistress taught the two children to break the law by selling alcohol at their apartment. She was arrested and deported for selling alcohol illegally.
However the mistress then sent her son from her home country to the UAE to force the young girls into the illegal alcohol trade.
Two years ago they were sold into prostitution, Lt Col Bin Shafe’ei said.
While they were aged just 11 and 14 years the girls were sold to six different individuals, who all raped them and forced them into prostitution, Maj Bin Darrai said.
The older girl was sold to an Asian man who took her for a week to his home country and then brought her back to UAE.
The younger girl was sold to an Asian woman who also forced her into prostitution.
The girls had been forced to sleep with dozens of clients for between Dh50 and Dh300 a time, police said.
The sisters were separated for months. However, through a pimp — who is the father’s mistress’s friend — the eldest girl was able to trace her sister, Maj Bin Darrai said.
The Asian woman who bought the youngest girl was arrested, with an Asian man who worked as a brothel guard. Police are searching for the children’s father, his former mistress, and her son.
——–Agencies