A court in Vietnam’s Mekong delta sentenced three women, including a daughter and her mother, to a total of 33 years in prison for trafficking a girl to Malaysia for sex work, a court ruled today.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang, 30, was sentenced to 12 years in prison yestersday, while her 62-year-old mother Vo Thi Beo received 10 years, both for trafficking a 15-year-old girl to Malaysia to work as a prostitute, according to the verdict by Can Tho City People’s Court.

Their 40-year-old accomplice Pham Thi Hanh was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the same offence.

“All of them admitted their crime at the trial,” Tong Thi Phung, the court’s secretary, told dpa.

Trang left Vietnam in 2005 for Malaysia, where she worked as a bar manager and met Hanh in 2014. The pair devised a plan to recruit young Vietnamese girls to work as prostitutes in Malaysian bars.

Hanh returned to Can Tho and persuaded the 15-year-old girl to work in at a cafe in Malaysia. The girl agreed and was transferred to stay with Beo in Ho Chi Minh City, according to the indictment.

Beo took the girl overland to Malaysia through Cambodia and Thailand, but upon arriving in Malaysia the girl refused to work as a prostitute and demanded to be returned home, the court paper said.

Trang demanded the victim's family pay around US$900 to return the girl to Vietnam. The victim’s family agreed but reported the case to police.

In July, Trang brought the victim back to Ho Chi Minh City and was arrested.

The court said Trang was also involved in trafficking five other girls to Malaysia, but an investigation into those cases has not yet resulted in a trial.

- dpa