Young Daughter Found Dead Next to Ex-Husband... Mother Cries Out Over Police Neglect

The biological mother of a four-year-old girl who lost her child due to police apathy, despite winning a child abduction return lawsuit, expressed her utter fury, saying, "I have cried so much that I have no tears left."

The young daughter of mother B was found dead on the afternoon of October 12 inside a vehicle in Pyoseon-myeon, Seogwipo, Jeju, along with her 40-year-old father, A.

Inside the vehicle were unconsumed antidepressant medications prescribed for A, who suffered from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ex-husband A, who lived in Australia, brought the child to South Korea without consent in October of last year. Concerned about A's mental state, B filed a Hague Convention child return lawsuit and won the case in March.

Following the court ruling, B came to South Korea from Australia in April to take her child back, but A went into hiding, moving from place to place with their daughter.

B stated that she reported her daughter missing to the police, but the authorities closed the case simply because they had a video call with the child.

"The police never actually tracked the child's location or verified her in person," B vented in anger. "No one even checked whether the child was moving from motel to motel or even sleeping on the streets."

She also mentioned that when Australian police requested to locate the child and separate her through Interpol, the response was merely calling the child to a local police box for a two-minute conversation with her father.

According to B's inquiries with the Ministry of Justice, child abuse reports filed in March and requests to verify the child's whereabouts in June were not even documented in police reports.

Even when she demanded protective separation after winning the Hague child return suit, she was only met with the response, "The person in charge is not here, so we will contact you later."

Having waited to bring her child home only to receive the tragic news, B pleaded, "The South Korean police wouldn't answer my calls and ignored my pleas. I am left wondering what else I could possibly have done here."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.