BREAKING NEWS: Seven More Sierra Leonean Girls Found in a West African Trafficking Ring
By Dr. Fatima Babih
There is breaking news coming out of Senegal that every Sierra Leonean, child girls' and women's rights advocates should know about.
Seven Sierra Leonean girls and young women, including minors, have reportedly been discovered at the center of a suspected sexual-trafficking operation in Ziguinchor, Senegal.
Some are reportedly as young as 14 years old. The story was published on September 21, 2026, by the Senegalese news outlet Seneweb. Since the original report appeared in French, many Sierra Leoneans may miss it. But we need to not only know about it, we also need to talk about it. Because for me, this story is disturbingly familiar.
A few years ago, I found several adolescent Sierra Leonean girls in Mauritania. Their true stories led me to research child trafficking across West Africa and eventually to write The Bal Bal Girls: A West African Child Trafficking Story.
So, this is a problem I wrote about years ago. And today, reading what investigators in Senegal say happened to these Sierra Leonean girls leaves me asking a painful question: How many more Bal Bal Girls are out there?
SEVEN SIERRA LEONEAN GIRLS FOUND IN SENEGAL
According to Seneweb, Senegal’s Directorate for the Fight Against Migrant Smuggling and Human Trafficking received information about several young Sierra Leonean women living in an apartment in Kandialang, Ziguinchor. Investigators reportedly found seven Sierra Leonean females, including minors, and interviewed them separately. Their accounts described a disturbing system.
The girls and young women reportedly said they had been recruited in Sierra Leone with promises of employment or better living conditions. Some were allegedly trafficked first to Guinea-Bissau before ending up in Senegal. According to their statements, those promises eventually gave way to sexual exploitation.
They reportedly described debts of 1.5 million CFA francs imposed upon them. Debt bondage is one of the issues I described in The Bal Bal Girls. The victims in Senegal allegedly received 3,000 CFA francs per client, but their earnings were handed over to their recruiters. They also told investigators that their identity documents and mobile phones had been confiscated.
Seneweb further reports allegations involving coercive ritual practices and videos allegedly retained as a means of pressure. Investigators are also examining allegations that identity documents were altered to conceal the true ages of some of the girls.
MARY CONTEH WAS REPORTEDLY ONLY 14
One account deserves particular attention. Seneweb identifies one of the alleged victims as Mary Conteh, who reportedly told investigators that she was recruited in Sierra Leone when she was only 14 years old. Her parents were allegedly led to believe that their daughter was being offered one kind of employment. Mary alleged that the recruiters obtained documentation making her appear to be an adult before she was transported to Guinea-Bissau. According to her account, she subsequently discovered that she was expected to engage in prostitution. She refused.
What allegedly followed included coercion, violence and forced sexual acts. She was later trafficked to Ziguinchor, where the exploitation allegedly continued. These allegations are part of an ongoing criminal matter. But Mary’s account raises questions that Sierra Leone cannot afford to ignore:
Who are the people recruiting adolescent Sierra Leonean girls for trafficking across West Africa?
How are the travel documents obtained making a child appear to be an adult?
How did the victims cross national borders without raising suspicions of the authorities?
And how many other Sierra Leonean girls may have traveled through similar channels without ever being found?
This story is particularly troubling to me because I have encountered another side of this problem personally. When I discovered the adolescent Sierra Leonean girls in Mauritania, their situation compelled me to start asking these questions:
Who were these girls?
How did they get there?
Who brought them?
And how widespread was the trafficking of vulnerable girls across West Africa?
Those encounters led me into deeper research and eventually resulted in my book, The Bal Bal Girls: A West African Child Trafficking Story.
But what I encountered in Mauritania was not simply an isolated episode frozen in time. Independent evidence shows that Sierra Leoneans have continued to be identified as trafficking victims in Mauritania.
According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, Mauritanian authorities identified 14 Sierra Leonean trafficking victims during the reporting period. The report does not specify whether those 14 Sierra Leoneans were victims of sex trafficking, forced labor or another form of trafficking.
But their identification years later independently reinforces the larger reality I encountered and subsequently researched: Sierra Leonean girls remain vulnerable to trafficking beyond our borders, including in countries as far away as Mauritania.
The State Department’s report on Sierra Leone goes even further, noting that Sierra Leonean migrants travel to Mauritania and other countries where traffickers exploit some in forced labor and sex trafficking. What I discovered a few years ago, therefore, was not merely a story about a particular group of girls at a particular moment. It was a window into a cross-border problem that has persisted, and the latest allegations from Senegal give us another reason to pay attention.
And I want to emphasize this now because of what is unfolding in Senegal:
The Bal Bal Girls is not fiction.
The book draws upon true-life stories of Sierra Leonean girls I encountered in Mauritania and my research into child trafficking across West Africa. At the time I wrote it, I wanted readers to look beyond statistics and understand how vulnerable girls can be recruited, transported, isolated and exploited. Today, the allegations emerging from Senegal make those lessons urgent once again.
For anyone trying to understand how trafficking can begin with an innocent-looking opportunity and end with a girl trapped hundreds of miles from home, The Bal Bal Girls provides an important window into that world.
It tells the human story behind the term “child trafficking.” And perhaps now is the time for Sierra Leonean parents, educators, policymakers, women’s organizations, schools and young people themselves to read the book; not simply as a book, but as a resource for conversations we urgently need to have about protecting our girls.
DIFFERENT COUNTRIES FAMILIAR PATTERNS
What concerns me about this case is the pattern it reveals.
Sierra Leonean girls.
Promises of opportunity.
Recruitment agents
Cross-border movement.
Isolation in strange countries.
Exploitation.
People profiting from their vulnerability.
The destinations may change. But the methods are disturbingly similar. Mauritania. Guinea-Bissau. Senegal. And most disturbing, the beginning of these journeys is Sierra Leone. That should concern all of us.
LET’S NOT FORGET AISHA IN NIGERIA
Senegal is not the only recent case that has brought me back to The Bal Bal Girls. In December 2025, I wrote about 18-year-old Sierra Leonean Aisha Francess Dumbuya, who publicly described how a Nigerian woman befriended her while she was street vending on the streets of Freetown in Sierra Leone.
After learning that Aisha dreamed of becoming an actress, the woman allegedly promised to help her travel to Nigeria and enter the Nollywood film industry. Aisha traveled by road with nine other girls, some of whom, according to her account, were dropped off in other West African countries along the journey.
When she reached Nigeria, she said the promised opportunity disappeared: she was told that the “job” was prostitution. Aisha refused and escaped. I wrote about her case at the time because the method sounded painfully familiar: gain a girl’s trust, identify her dream, offer an opportunity, move her across borders, and reveal the exploitation only when she is far from home and vulnerable.
Now, less than a year later, we are reading allegations from Senegal involving Sierra Leonean girls reportedly recruited with promises of employment. Different girls. Different destinations. Different alleged traffickers. But once again, opportunity appears to have been used as the bait.
One of the most important lessons from my research for The Bal Bal Girls is that trafficking does not always begin with kidnapping.
Sometimes it begins with a promise:
“I can put your daughter through school.”
I can find your daughter a job.”
“She will make good money and change your life.”
“I know someone overseas who can help her.”
“She can work and send money home.”
“This is a good opportunity for her.”
For most families in Sierra Leone who are living in abject poverty, those words can sound like God-sent solutions. For an ambitious young girl, they can sound like a doorway to a better future. That is precisely what makes deceptive recruitment so dangerous. The danger does not necessarily announce itself as danger. Most times, it arrives disguised as opportunity.
THE ALLEGED RECRUITMENT BEGAN IN SIERRA LEONE
One detail in the Seneweb investigation should be of particular concern to Sierra Leoneans and the authorities. According to the report, the alleged operation relied upon contacts or agents based in Sierra Leone.
These intermediaries allegedly approached parents or girls directly and promised paid employment in Senegal. If investigators substantiate those allegations, then this cannot simply be treated as a Senegalese problem.
The alleged recruitment began in Sierra Leone.
Who are the recruiters?
Where are they operating?
How are they identifying vulnerable girls?
How are minors being transported across borders without their parents?
If documents are being falsified to make children appear older, which government agency is facilitating it?
And what systems do we have in Sierra Leone to identify suspicious recruitment before a child leaves the country?
These questions deserve to be investigated. The answers to these questions will help us understand the warning signs, which are essential for prevention.
THE BAL BAL GIRLS WAS A WARNING & A CALL TO ACTION
When I wrote The Bal Bal Girls, I wanted readers to see the human beings behind the words “child trafficking.”
Not statistics.
Not labels.
Not girls to be blamed for supposedly making bad choices.
Girls. Children, young women and their families living in poverty; ambitions and futures whose vulnerabilities can be identified and exploited by people who know exactly what they are doing.
The Sierra Leonean girls I encountered in Mauritania had stories. Mary Conteh has a story. The other girls reportedly discovered in Ziguinchor have stories. And so does Aisha who was rescued in Nigeria.
And somewhere in West Africa today, there may be another set of Sierra Leonean girls whose stories have not yet reached an activist, a police station, an embassy or a newspaper. That is why I believe The Bal Bal Girls deserves renewed attention now.
Its purpose extends beyond telling what happened to a particular group of girls. It can help us start conversations in homes, schools and communities about how trafficking happens, what warning signs look like, and how we can intervene before another child disappears across a border.
The continuing relevance of the book is not something I celebrate. I would rather the dangers I wrote about had disappeared. But while Sierra Leonean girls continue to surface in trafficking investigations elsewhere in West Africa, we must use every educational tool available to us. The Bal Bal Girls is one of those tools.
THIS IS NOT FOR SENEGAL ALONE TO INVESTIGATE
Sierra Leonean authorities should pay close attention to what has been uncovered in Ziguinchor. If recruiters or intermediaries are operating inside Sierra Leone, they need to be identified and investigated. If children are crossing borders with falsified ages, we need to understand how. If parents are being deceived with false employment offers, communities need education.
And when Sierra Leonean trafficking victims are identified abroad, we need systems for their protection, safe repatriation and reintegration. Trafficking crosses borders. Our response must cross borders too.
How many more Bal Bal Girls are out there? The news from Senegal demands that Sierra Leoneans and the government confront the reality of this question. Looking away is no longer an option!
Dr. Fatima Babih is the author of The Bal Bal Girls: A West African Child Trafficking Story, based on the true-life stories of Sierra Leonean girls she encountered in Mauritania and her research into child trafficking in West Africa.
References
Primary source for the breaking story: Ziguinchor : sept Sierra-Léonaises, dont des mineures, au cœur d’une affaire présumée de traite sexuelle
The English Rendering of The Seneweb Article
Ziguinchor: Seven Sierra Leonean Women and Girls, Including Minors, at the Center of a Suspected Sex-Trafficking Case
A suspected human-trafficking operation involving sexual exploitation has resulted in two women being brought before the Public Prosecutor at the High Court of Ziguinchor, Senegal. The women are Fatu Fofanah, also known as “Loveta,” a Sierra Leonean national, and Testimony Blessing, a Nigerian national (Seneweb)
The case came to light after the Ziguinchor regional branch of Senegal’s agency responsible for combating migrant smuggling and human trafficking received information that several young Sierra Leonean women were living in an apartment in Kandialang, Ziguinchor.
Investigators located the apartment and found seven Sierra Leonean females, some of whom were reportedly as young as 14 years old. They were taken to the authorities for verification and individual interviews (Seneweb).
According to their separate accounts, the girls and young women were allegedly recruited in Sierra Leone with promises of jobs or a better life. Some reportedly traveled through Guinea-Bissau before reaching Ziguinchor. Once there, they were housed in the Kandialang apartment and allegedly subjected to sexual exploitation.
The alleged victims identified Fatu Fofanah (“Loveta”) and Testimony Blessing as people involved in what they described as a trafficking network operating across Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal (Seneweb).
The alleged debt system
According to the accounts collected by investigators, the young women were allegedly told that they owed a debt of 1.5 million CFA francs. Some reportedly said they had already paid off the amount, while others were still paying.
They reportedly received 3,000 CFA francs per client, with their earnings turned over to the recruiters at the end of each day. Investigators reportedly found notebooks containing names and monetary amounts that may have been used to keep records of these payments (Seneweb).
The alleged victims also said that their identity documents and mobile phones were confiscated, limiting their ability to move freely or communicate with others.
They further described alleged ritual practices during which videos were made and retained as a means of coercion or pressure. (Seneweb)
Allegations that documents were altered to conceal the girls’ ages
Investigators also examined health records carried by some of the young women. Some reportedly said they had never personally visited the health districts supposedly responsible for issuing the documents.
According to their accounts, documents may have been produced using older records, with photographs and identifying information changed. The alleged purpose of some of these alterations was to conceal the true ages of underage girls (Seneweb).
The case of 14-year-old Mary Conteh
The article highlights the testimony of Mary Conteh.
According to her account, she was recruited in Sierra Leone when she was 14 years old. Her parents were allegedly told that she was being offered a type of employment different from what she was ultimately made to do.
Mary alleges that an identity document was obtained that made her appear to be an adult before she was transported to Guinea-Bissau. There, she was allegedly placed in the care of a woman identified as Kadiatou Fofanah, also known as “Gift” (Seneweb).
Mary reportedly told investigators that she was a virgin when she arrived and subsequently discovered that she was expected to engage in prostitution. She says that when she refused, she was subjected to coercion and taken to a bar called “GNANT,” opposite the Canchungo garage in Guinea-Bissau.
According to her account, she was placed under the control of the bar manager, known as “Blacka.” She alleges that he subjected her to violence and forced sexual acts. She was later transferred to Ziguinchor, where the sexual exploitation allegedly continued (Seneweb).
Alleged recruitment network inside Sierra Leone
When confronted with the statements from the young women, Fatu Fofanah (“Loveta”) and Testimony Blessing reportedly largely acknowledged involvement in recruiting some of the girls found in the apartment and housing them for purposes of sexual exploitation, according to Seneweb.
They reportedly told investigators that the operation depended upon contacts or intermediaries based in Sierra Leone.
These intermediaries allegedly approached either parents or girls directly, promising paid employment in Senegal. After being transported, however, the young women allegedly discovered that the promised jobs did not exist and that they were instead expected to engage in sexual activity for money (Seneweb).
The two accused women reportedly also told investigators that they themselves had previously been victims of similar practices, and allegedly described their subsequent involvement in trafficking in terms of revenge (Seneweb).
Victims allegedly transferred or “sold” to other exploiters
The investigation further indicates that some alleged victims could be transferred to other locations after exploitation and handed over to other exploiters for payments reportedly reaching 1 million CFA francs per victim (Seneweb).
At the conclusion of the investigation, Fatu Fofanah and Testimony Blessing were brought before the Public Prosecutor at the High Court of Ziguinchor.
According to Seneweb, the allegations against them include criminal conspiracy, procuring/pimping, extortion, human trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, forgery and use of forged administrative documents, and complicity in rape. These remain allegations reported in connection with the prosecution, rather than findings of guilt (Seneweb).
The article was written by Astou Sow, published on September 21, 2026, and updated early on September 22, 2026. (Seneweb)
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