The National Police in Tenerife have arrested six men for their alleged involvement in crimes of exploiting minors for prostitution, sexual assault, and child pornography. These individuals facilitated the prostitution of minors to various extents, ranging from profiting from their transportation to booking hotels where the minors were not registered.
A report made by an employee at a supervised minor care facility alerted the investigators from the National Police’s GRUME unit.
The worker had noticed text messages on one of the girls’ smartphones at the centre, raising suspicions that the teenager might be engaged in prostitution.
Immediately, authorities implemented a series of physical and virtual measures to assess the scope of the situation. Tracking advertisements on websites, instant messaging services, or hotel reservations revealed that several minors could potentially be victims of exploitation.
Through investigative measures such as virtual patrolling and analysing the collected pornographic material, the authorities managed to circumvent the security measures taken by the suspects, thus identifying six men as the alleged perpetrators of the crimes.
Two of the suspects, managers of a brothel in southern Tenerife where the minors were being exploited, allegedly attempted to coerce them into covering up their involvement.
Despite this, the National Police investigators have managed to identify five underage girls as victims of these crimes, without ruling out the possibility of more victims.
Luring minors in a leisure zone in southern Tenerife
Upon receiving judicial authorisation, the National Police deployed an operation across Tenerife involving 50 officers from various departments of the Provincial Police Station in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Five raids were conducted, resulting in the arrest of six men for their suspected involvement in the ongoing investigation.
Investigators seized 15 smartphones, a laptop, and numerous external storage devices.
Among the detainees were the managers of a brothel in a well-known leisure area in southern Tenerife, who allegedly recruited these minors and sexually exploited them outside of the venue’s opening hours.
Following their statements, the detainees were handed over to the competent judicial authority, which ordered the imprisonment of three of them.
The National Police has commenced the second phase of the investigation, during which over 200 buyers of child pornography across Spain have been identified, along with new clients and facilitators of the minors’ prostitution, indicating potential further arrests.
