Newborn Girl Sold For $9000 To Online Buyer By Broke Parents

A newborn girl was sold by her young parents to an online buyer via an agent for $9,000 in central China, South China Morning Post reported Monday. The couple, who is said to be broke, were detained by police following the allegation.

The suspects were detained after police in Xishui township, in Hubei province, launched an investigation at the beginning of August into a cross-province child-trafficking case in cooperation with police in Hunan province.

A 19-year-old man, who goes by the last name Gao, and a 20-year-old woman surnamed Zhang, were taken into custody. Both the accused were from the Chinese province of Hubei and were reportedly under financial pressure, having already had a son last year, Xishui police reportedly said via Weibo, China’s Twitter.

According to local reports, the couple allegedly contacted an online agent in Hunan province in April. The agent later found a buyer for their newborn daughter and sold her for $9,440. The couple and the agent are yet to be prosecuted in the case and it also remains unclear if the alleged buyer of the daughter had been traced.

Under Chinese law, trafficking and selling women and children is punishable by five to 10 years in prison. However, some exceptional cases also lead to life sentencing or the death penalty.

Earlier this month, a woman and her partner, who live in Germany, were sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for selling the woman's son to pedophiles on the internet. The couple was accused of repeatedly raping and abusing the boy from May 2015. Since 2016, the boy was sold online to other men for sex, court documents said.

The pair was arrested in 2017 after the abuse, which was caught on camera, was reported to police.

In another similar incident, a mother in Texas was sentenced to 40 years in prison for offering to sell her 2-year-old daughter for sex with an adult man for $1,200. In July, Sarah Marie Peters of Houston pleaded guilty to one count each of sexual performance of a child, promotion of prostitution of a child and attempted human trafficking, the Montgomery County District Attorneys office said in a news release at the time.