Police: Man tried to sell daughter into marriage for cash, beer, meat

[helderheid]

The Associated Press
Updated: 01/13/2009 09:21:42 AM MST

REENFIELD, Calif. -- Police have arrested a Greenfield man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat.

Police say they only learned of the deal after 36-year-old Marcelino de Jesus Martinez went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn't made as promised.

Martinez was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.

Officers also arrested 18-year-old Margarito de Jesus Galindo on suspicion of statutory rape. Investigators believe the girl went willingly with Galindo, but she's under California's legal age of consent and can't legally marry.

Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11442718?source=rss

[billyoc]

1. Oh, Oregon has a south, too.

[KittyWampus]

2. So that was her brideprice? Old customs die hard. Edit- as an Anthropologist, I'd remind

DU'ers this kind of activity was the norm for most cultures.

[Warpy]

5. Marriage is a total crapshoot

no matter how it comes about. I've known people in happy and unhappy arranged marriages and I've certainly known enough people who chose their own partners who ended up in divorce as well as some who have stayed together for 30+ years because it worked.

The only advantage I can see to the arranged marriage is that it will never suffer from the high expectations that doom a lot of chosen marriages when reality sets in.

Fourteen is too damned young, IMO, although it's the norm in much of the developing world.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. The problem is not that the marriage was arranged or she was "sold"

into marriage - the problem is that she was 14.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Arranged marriage isn't always wrong, but usually is. Underage marriage always is.

The line "Investigators believe the girl went willingly with Galindo" counts for something - the father *may* (although I'd definately bet the other way given that he tried to get her back) have believed that he was doing the right thing for her.

But 14 is far too young to get married in 21st century America.

[LiberalFighter]

8. I would agree that 14 is too young. IMO even in biblical times.

I watched "Jesus Born" on NatGeo a few days ago and they premise that the Virgin Mary was not likely in reference to her being a virgin but a use of the wrong word in Greek which should had been young woman. And that she could had been as young as 14 during that period.

[LiberalFighter]

4. Didn't know this was happening in Mexico.

[Nikki Stone1]

7. Must have been reading the Bible literally.

:evilgrin: