GIRL, 13, WAS HIDING FROM ARRANGED MARRIAGE

NO MARRIAGE

COPS SMELLED A RAT. And it was mom. After spending more than a week in a desperate search for a missing California girl, 13, detectives determined she was running from an arranged marriage in Pakistan.
According to cops, Jesse Bender's family had led them to believe that she had run off with a man she had met online. She had been reported missing from her home in Hesperia Feb. 22. Melissa Bender told detectives her daughter had run off with someone she had been communicating with on Facebook and that she didn't want to go on a two-month vacation to her father's native Pakistan.

San Bernardino Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said: "All that information was misleading. Whoever she was communicating with online was not a threat to her."

In reality, the girl was being safely hidden in a hotel in a nearby town
protecting her from being taken to Pakistan.
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