• Investigation The minors of the Balearic Islands point to the Government for the prostitution network: "The educators knew it and they cover themselves"

  • Society The Balearic Government hid for a year that minors under guardianship prostituted themselves through contact websites

The

European Parliament

denounces systemic failures in the protection of minors in care in the Balearic Islands and demands that all action protocols be "reconsidered".

In addition, it concludes that legislation approved more than 15 years ago has been breached when it comes to protecting children in vulnerable situations, detects deficiencies in the security of reformatories and points out that there has not been sufficient "transparency" or "coordination" between institutions and police authorities.

This is reflected in writing in the report prepared by the

Petitions Committee

on the prostitution scandal of foster girls, to which EL MUNDO has had access, a serious matter that has been brewing for years hidden from public opinion (at least since 2015). and that exploded in the archipelago governed by the PSOE two years ago now.

The outbreak of the most serious case that has occurred in recent years in the Islands occurred after a runaway minor, just 13 years old, was raped on Christmas Eve 2019.

The opinion, which is currently in the pleadings phase, has just been drafted by the group of MEPs who traveled to Mallorca

last April

to investigate the matter 'in situ'.

They interviewed police officers, members of the autonomous government and the insular government, members of the Prosecutor's Office and mothers of minors who, after losing custody of their daughters, denounced that they ended up being sexually exploited in exchange for money and drugs by adults and pimps.

It is the first time that a European body has ruled in a report on a phenomenon that has been detected in other Spanish autonomous communities and that, as the community body now denounces, has already taken on a "European dimension".

The authors of the report conclude that "comprehensive action by all competent authorities" is necessary to solve the problem.

They point out that it is necessary to "strengthen cooperation and improve communication" between the guardianship institutions, dependent on the regional and insular government and that they must collaborate "closely and effectively with the Prosecutor's Office."

"Protect them from abusers"

The Commission asks that minors "be the object of the greatest possible attention" to "protect them from abusers."

And he identifies the repeated "escapes" from the centers as one of the "greatest danger" factors for which the girls ended up being prostituted.

The report reflects that minors ran away "up to three times a day" and that some ended up in 'squatter houses' in

Palma

where they were prostituted.

In addition, it detects basic flaws in the investigation methods after an escape, since sometimes the photo of the escaped minors was not even shared with the police authorities, alluding to the data protection law.

One of the elements demanded by the European Commission is that

protection centers for minors with behavioral problems be created in the

Balearic Islands .

Something that, he remarks, is foreseen in the Organic Law of Legal Protection of Minors, a norm that was approved in 1996, and that however "has not yet been developed in the Balearic Islands."

Among other things, due to the lack of qualified technical personnel and the instability in the templates.

The investigation of the European Union, of a political nature, advances in parallel with the judicial investigation of the alleged networks of sexual exploitation organized around the minors who were interned in the centers.

As this newspaper has been reporting in recent weeks, in this investigation it has been detected how at least a dozen girls prostituted themselves with thirty adults outside the protection centers, incurring in all kinds of humiliating practices.

Some of the minors, in whose letters they explained that they prostituted themselves for "money" and gifts, dedicated themselves to attracting other girls in the same situation, fellow inmates in their centers.

The intercepted messages on their mobiles reveal how they even planned to poison some of their clients or buy weapons to attack and rob them.

Although the matter was only publicly admitted by the insular and autonomous government in January 2020, the judicial summary of the case reveals how already throughout 2019 there were already educators who had internally warned of the existence of that prostitution network.

The

Govern

and the

Consell de Mallorca

have always defended that they intervened at all times and that they applied the action protocols, transferring suspicious cases to the Public Prosecutor's Office.

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  • Articles Esteban Urreiztieta

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