Judge: Teenager’s case sounds like slavery to me

An arrangement where the parents of a 17-year-old girl from Romania let a man bring her to Ireland where she was arrested for theft “sounds like slavery to me”, a judge said yesterday.

Three days after arriving in Ireland with the man, aged 23, who claims to be her fiancé, she was arrested for stealing €296 worth of cosmetics in Dublin.

The girl was arrested on Tuesday and held in a Garda station overnight. Gardaí were concerned she was an unaccompanied minor. On Wednesday she was remanded in custody by Dublin Children’s Court over concerns she did not have an address.