14 DAY TRIAL // A former kindergarten teacher from Taiwan is suing the mother of one of his pupils because the woman broke her promise to let him marry her 8-year-old daughter when he came of age.
The two agreed upon the deal eleven years ago, when the man, referred to only as Chu in local reports, was working at a kindergarten in Taipei and fell in love with the girl. He became so obsessed with her that he even managed to obtain a promise from the girl’s mother that he could marry the girl once she turned 17.
The man, who was 32 at the time, believed that the woman would keep her end of the bargain, so he spent the next several years providing the girl’s family with financial support. He reportedly spent more than 900,000 Taiwanese dollars (US $30,000 or €21,600) on the girl's family.
Chu took the girl on trips, bought her presents and covered her tuition and living expenses. Moreover, he claims he even paid off some of her mother’s debts.
However, nine years later, when the woman was supposed to deliver on her promise, the man was shocked to discover that his promised wife had secretly married another man and even had her own child. He found the upsetting information on the 17-year-old girl’s Facebook profile.
Enraged by the fact that the mother broke the terms of their contract, he decided to sue her for fraud, trying to get back the money he spent on the family.
“I was stunned. Her mother had strung me along for years promising me that she would be mine when she was 17. I immediately knew that she was the perfect one for me when I first saw her even though she was very young. I am not a child abuser, I was happy to wait, and so I agreed a deal with her mother,” the heartbroken man told the judge, as reported by Daily Mail.
However, the case didn't go as he hoped, as the judge ruled that the initial verbal contract between the man and the mother was against public morals. In addition, the judge said the whole promise of marriage was null from the beginning.
During the trial, the man presented a written contract created in 2012, but it was rejected as evidence because it was made after the girl’s marriage.
According to some reports in local media, the girl was never aware of the agreement.