The National Police has released 21 victims of sexual exploitation in Alicante, one of them forced to prostitute herself as a ‘trans crossdresser’. Thanks to this operation, a criminal organization allegedly dedicated to trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation has been dismantled and nine people have been arrested. The leaders have already entered prison.
As explained by the Headquarters in a statement, the victims were recruited in Colombia through deception and, once in Spain, they were forced to work as prostitutes to pay off their debt.
The organization had “a perfectly hierarchical structure with a clear distribution of tasks among its members,” highlights the Police, which details that those investigated are charged with the alleged commission of the crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, trafficking in human beings for of sexual exploitation, crimes against the rights of foreign citizens (encouragement of irregular immigration), crimes related to prostitution and documentary falsification.
The investigation began when one of the victims managed to escape from one of the flats where she was being held and contacted National Police agents at the Alicante-Elche Airport to ask for help.
This person stated that he was recruited in his country of origin under the false promise that he was going to work in Spain as a kitchen assistant and, due to his precarious economic situation, he accepted the offer.
Upon her arrival in Spain, she was forced to work as a prostitute to pay off the debt she had acquired with the organization on the occasion of her trip, which had increased exponentially based on alleged interest and various expenses that had nothing to do with it. with the trip itself.
The victim told the agents the deplorable conditions in which she had to practice prostitution, of “absolute” exploitation. She was in a regime of semi-slavery, since she had to be available at all times for clients, in 24-hour shifts, 7 days a week, and she was not free to go out on public roads.
When the agents became aware of these facts, they immediately activated the police protocols for the protection of the victim and began the investigative investigations in order to detect and verify if there was another victim in the same situation.
The organization had a large infrastructure that allowed it to control up to six flats/premises in the city of Alicante and extended its branches to Murcia and Valencia.
Thanks to the “great criminal experience” of the main leader of the organization, they gave all their activities a legal appearance. They had “such a degree of criminal professionalization” that they came to have a travel agency through which, fraudulently, they carried out the transfer of their victims to Spain and circumvented border controls by posing as tourists, police sources stress.
The alleged perpetrators of the events, due to the large volume of business they handled, had an income of about 21,000 euros per month, which allowed them to lead a high standard of living both for the luxury homes in which they lived and for the vehicles high-end they drove.
After various efforts – and once they managed to detect new potential victims subjected to sexual exploitation by pimps – the investigators arrested the nine members of the organization, led by a man who has “multiple” police records.
In addition, six simultaneous searches were carried out in the different premises that they ran, where the agents managed to identify another 20 new potential victims. The main members of the organization were brought before the courts, which ordered the imprisonment of the two leaders of the organization.
As a sign of their habitual way of proceeding, and of the “zero empathy” they showed, one of the released victims was allegedly forced to prostitute himself against his will as a ‘trans cd’ “with the sole objective of obtaining a greater economic return of their sexual exploitation. She was forced to purchase items to prostitute herself such as wigs and dresses, which they demanded she pay, a fact that increased the balance of her debt.
In this way, the Police stresses, “a double victimization occurred: on the one hand, they allegedly forced him to perform sexual practices against his will and, on the other, the very nature of these sexual practices caused his debt to increase more.” .
