The National Police have arrested six men in Tenerife for alleged responsibility for the crimes of prostitution of minors, sexual assault and child pornography. These people managed the prostitution of minors in different ways: they charged for travel and were in charge of booking hotels in which they did not register the victims.
The operation began following a complaint from a worker at a sheltered center for minors, which activated the GRUME investigators of the National Police. The worker stated that he had observed text messages on the phone of one of the girls at the center that led him to think that the teenager could be practicing prostitution.
Immediately, the researchers deployed a series of measures, also in the virtual sphere, to verify the extent of this situation. Thus, the tracking of advertisements on websites, instant messaging service channels and hotel reservations revealed that they were facing the possible case of prostitution of more than one minor.
A note from the National Police explains that thanks to investigations such as virtual patrolling and the analysis of the pornographic material collected, it was possible to evade the security measures adopted by those involved, thus identifying six men as the alleged perpetrators of the crimes described. .
Although two of those investigated, in charge of a hostess club in the south of the island of Tenerife in which minors were prostituted, would have tried to coerce the girls to cover up their participation, the National Police investigators have managed to At the moment, five underage girls have been identified, without ruling out that the number of victims could be higher.
These managers of the hostess club, already detained, were dedicated to capturing these minors and sexually exploiting them outside the opening hours of the establishment.
50 officers from different services of the Provincial National Police Station of Santa Cruz de Tenerife participated in the operation, carrying out five entries and searches that culminated in the arrest of the six men for their alleged participation in the events investigated.
The investigators seized 15 smartphones, a laptop and multiple external storage devices.
The detainees, after testifying, were placed at the disposal of the judge, who ordered the imprisonment of three of them.
The National Police has begun the second phase of the investigation, in which more than 200 buyers of child pornography spread throughout Spain, as well as new clients and facilitators of the prostitution of minors, have been identified, so it is expected new arrests.
