‘Unworthy to be a father’: man in China arrested for marrying off mentally disabled teen daughter to three older men for profit
- A farmer in central China has been arrested after he was caught marrying off his mentally disabled teen daughter to different men for cash
- Men in rural areas struggle to find wives due to China’s gender imbalance and the high bride price demanded for daughters
A man in China has been arrested for allegedly marrying off his mentally disabled teenage daughter multiple times to get his hands on bride prices, Chinese media has reported.
A farmer, surnamed Xie, from a village in Lianyuan, Hunan province in central China, sold his daughter to three men over as many years to get bride payments from the men’s families, reported The Paper on Wednesday.
Xie claimed his daughter, now aged 17, was legally an adult over 20 years old when the fraudulent marriages took place between 2018 and 2021.
However, she was actually born in January 2005, according to her identity card, said the brother of one of the duped grooms, surnamed Chen.
It’s still a widely-practised marriage custom in mainland China for the groom’s family to pay a large sum of money to the bride’s family.
Xie collected more than 90,000 yuan (US$13,300) from Chen’s family that was supposed to be his daughter’s second “marriage”. Xie refused to repay the money when the Chen family learned his daughter had later married another man.
Chen said his family didn’t realise what was going on because the girl mainly lived with her parents after the wedding was held as his brother spent most of his time away as a migrant worker.
