(Washington Insider Magazine) – A 29-year-old woman was arrested after pretending to be a teenage student at a NJ high school. Some fear she may have been trying to recruit minors for sex trafficking.
Hyejeong Shin, a 29-year-old adult, was arrested after pretending to be a teenage student at a New Brunswick, New Jersey, high school for four days before she was discovered, authorities said.
She was accused of providing documents that falsified her age to school officials, The New York Times reported. She was arrested last week and identified this Wednesday. The question now is to determine what her motives were for slipping into minors.
It was not immediately clear why Shin was posing as a teenager. Some students at the school said she had been making friends and feared she may have been trying to recruit minors for sex trafficking.
“I think he was really trying to traffic young women… I heard he was still trying to contact some of the young girls here even after we found out,” Abrianna Martin, a senior at New Brunswick Today, told New Brunswick Today. That school.
Shin has not commented, and neither police nor the school district responded to requests for more information about what her motive might have been, NBC News noted.
Aubrey Johnson, superintendent of the New Brunswick Public School District, spoke about the situation Tuesday night during a board of education meeting.
Shin “She was here for four days before she was found out and banned from district property,” Johnson said in a video posted to social media. “All appropriate authorities were immediately notified and the person in question was arrested for providing false documentation.”
Shin allegedly provided a fake birth certificate to the New Brunswick Board of Education with the intent to enroll as a high school student, police said.
Schools must immediately enroll unaccompanied minors, even in the absence of normally required records, NJ.com detailed. Proof of guardianship is not required to immediately register an unaccompanied child or youth. The superintendent said her district would review her enrollment process to prevent something like this from happening again.
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has warned since 2020 of an increase in cases of child pornography during the pandemic due to the lack of school, sports and recreational activity, and the greater time adults and children spend online.
This week in New York Arthur Dawson, a pimp described as one of “the most violent traffickers”, was sentenced to 50 years behind bars for forcing minors into prostitution, some of them recruited via Facebook.
This article is authored by El Diario.
