Police warn child traffickers
Detectives attached to the Anti Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit have launched investigations into an incident where a young girl was saved by a bus conductor from being trafficked.
Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) officers on Wednesday warned parents and guardians of a new trend being used by sexual predators to prey on young girls.
The warning came after a bus conductor saved a teenage girl from a sex predator after she boarded their bus plying Nairobi-Mombasa route to meet a man she had only met on Facebook.
Narrating his story on social media before the DCI picked it up, the conductor of the Executive Bus company said they were forced to accommodate the teenage girl at their Mombasa office and return her to Machakos before reporting the matter to the police.
The unidentified conductor said that the girl boarded their bus at Machakos Junction and was heading to the coast to meet a stranger she had contact with on Facebook but lied she was going to meet her brother who stays in Mariakani.
When the conductor asked her to pay her bus fare amounting to Sh1,500, the girl said she had Sh500 only and promised to settle the balance before they reached Mtito Andei, a promise that was not honoured.
After failing to settle the bus fare, the conductor became suspicious and called the stranger the girl had introduced as a brother asking him to come to the bus stop for the girl and settle the remaining Sh1000.
“Upon reaching Samburu, the conductor called the man and tricked him that they had arrived in Mariakani, but the man told him to send the girl to Kaloleni by a motorbike, where she would meet him and settle the balance.”
Fearing for the young girl’s safety and tired of being taken on a wild-goose chase, the conductor went with the girl to Mombasa.
Later on, the girl confessed that the man whom she was about to meet was not her brother but a stranger with whom they had only established contact through Facebook.
The bus company was forced to return the girl to Machakos Junction after she disowned the man who had come to pick her, saying he did not resemble the man they had been chatting with on Facebook.
“The bus company provided accommodation for the teenager and a bus ride back to Machakos Junction, where she had boarded their bus the previous day,” said DCI.
Detectives said the predators target the school-going girls and those who have just completed their secondary school education through social media.
The conductor said cases of teenage girls being lured by strangers through social media are on the rise.