For love and N5m: that’s why and how much my classmate betrayed her dad for

"My college classmate, Alli, was one of those ‘kinda weird’ girls.  She was very pretty, had a ton of male admirers but never seemed to be too much interested in our college life. We were friends but she never agreed to go to parties, clubs or school functions with us. She couldn’t be bothered with the normal stuff people our age liked.

Sometime in our third year, I noticed that she’d begun to go out more. She would skip classes and not sleep in her room for many days at a time. Then one day, I met her with this new guy who she introduced to me as her boyfriend.  i didn't like the vibes he gave off - tall, broody looks and attitude (that’s not the problem), it was obvious he had a strong hold on Alli plus he was not a student so I couldn't get what she was doing with him. She was different when she was with him and it was odd to see how this usually strong willed girl would become almost docile in his presence.

One day, I got to the dorm to hear people talking about Alli and how she’d been kidnapped. It was the craziest and hottest news of the period and the whole school was buzzing with the story.

From their family friend, we heard a ransom request had been made and days later, her dad coughed out N5m (about $31,000) to get Alli back. We were all relieved she was safe.

Less than two weeks after, I found Alli looking dazed and acting stranger than usual. For days, I tried to get her to tell me what the problem was but she wouldn’t…until one day. She said that her boyfriend, the creepy bad boy, had taken off and she didn’t know where. She was bitter and in tears, crying about how she loved him so much and couldn’t understand why he would betray her especially after she’d done the unthinkable for him. I remember asking, ‘’what unthinkable thing did you do for him?’ She had stared at me quietly before turning away. And that was that.

It was months later when some of us heard the true story from her family friend. In remorse, one day, Alli had ‘fessed up to her dad, telling him that her boyfriend had convinced her to help him get some money by faking her kidnap. She said he needed the money to help pay for his sister’s surgery but shortly after the ransom was collected, he had disappeared on her and she didn’t know where. She also didn't know the whereabouts of his ‘sick’ sister so she could not even track him through her.

 

While people expressed all kinds of opinions about Alli, all I kept thinking was – ‘how did a common thug get this smart girl to do such a stupidly horrible thing to her family?’ I don’t even know what drove her to a confession but I so would have liked to have been a fly on the wall of their house when she did because I can imagine the chaos her confession caused. She didn’t come back to school after that and we later heard her dad shipped her out of the country. Wonder where she is now."