PHOTO: 16-Year-Old Girl Has Three Kids

By
-
0
91
Columbia University in the United States of America has honoured Felix Dela Klutse, the Business Editor of DAILY GUIDE for winning the 2011 Citi Journalistic Excellence Award at a ceremony held in New York City on Wednesday. Mr Klutse, the first Ghanaian journalist to have won the prestigious and competitive award since its inception in 1982, was honoured alongside 19 other journalists who hail from countries such as Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria, among others

A CHILD bride who has THREE children aged just 16 is at the centre of a ‘stolen innocence’ storm in Bulgaria. Tiny Tinka Angelova gave birth last month to her third child, son Dinko, just 23 months after she first became a mother.

She was still playing with dolls when she met husband Biser Demirev — NINE years her senior — aged 13.

The pregnant youngster was forced to leave school, married at 14, and now lives in poverty on a cattle farm in Saedinenie, central Bulgaria, 30 miles from her parents.

She spends her days looking after baby Dinko, daughter Naska, two, and son Gospodin, one. The legal age for sex and marriage in Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, is 16 — the same as the UK.

But officials in capital Sofia have been accused of turning a blind eye to underage marriages in rural communities in order to protect election votes.

Regional prosecutor Georgi Katsarov said: “I’ve been appealing to the court for years for these illegal marriages to be exposed. “The law says offenders might get up to two years in jail – and parents three. We have to put an end to this practice.

“When the husband and the wife are both under 16 there is less we can do, but adult offenders should be punished.”

Government child protection agency spokesman Kamelia Nikolova added: “To marry, or even live with someone under 16 is sexual offence according to the law.

Read the original: