- Hyejeong Shin, a 29-year-old adult, was arrested for pretending to be a high school student in New Brunswick, NJ, for four days before being discovered.
- Shin is suspected of providing false documents to school officials and potentially attempting to recruit minors for sex trafficking.
- The school district is reviewing its enrollment process to prevent similar situations in the future, as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has warned of an increase in child exploitation cases during the pandemic.
Hyejeong Shin, a 29-year-old adult, was arrested after pretending to be a teenage student at a high school in New Brunswick, N.J., for four days before she was discovered, authorities said.
The New York Times reported that she was accused of providing documents falsifying her age to school officials. She was arrested last week and identified Wednesday. The question now is to determine her motives for sneaking in among minors.
It was not immediately clear why Shin posed as a teenager. Some students at the school said she was making friends and feared she might have been trying to recruit minors for sex trafficking.
“I think she was really trying to traffic young women…I heard she was still trying to contact some of the young girls here even after we found out,” what happened told New Brunswick Today Abrianna Martin, a senior at that school.
Shin has not issued a comment, and neither police nor the school district responded to requests for more information about what his motive may have been, NBC News noted.
Aubrey Johnson, superintendent of the New Brunswick Public School District, spoke about the situation Tuesday night during a board of education meeting.
Shin “was here for four days before she was discovered and banned from district property,” Johnson said in a video posted on social media. “All proper authorities were notified immediately, and the person in question was arrested for providing false documentation.”
Shin allegedly provided a false birth certificate to the New Brunswick Board of Education with the intent to enroll as a high school student, police said.
Schools must immediately enroll unaccompanied minors, even without records normally required, NJ.com detailed. Proof of guardianship is not required to enroll an unaccompanied child or youth immediately. The superintendent said her district would review its enrollment process to prevent something like this from happening again.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) warned in 2020 of an increase in child pornography cases during the pandemic because of the lack of school, sports, recreational activities, and more adult and child time online.
This week in New York Arthur Dawson, a pimp described as one of “the most violent traffickers,” was sentenced to 50 years behind bars for forcing underage girls into prostitution, some of them recruited via Facebook.