11 arrested in Malaga for sexual exploitation

THE National Police arrested 11 people on Friday (January 8), and in doing so broke up a network that sexually exploited more than 60 women in various clubs in Malaga and Granada.

A police spokesman told El Pais national daily that the victims were forced to maintain sexual relations with the managers of the organisation in order to be able to work in the clubs, and fed drugs “to put up with the long days of exploitation which they were subjected to.”

The investigation which began a year ago focused on different clubs on the Costa del Sol and in Granada, where foreign women were being forced into prostitution by an organisation comprising of mainly Spanish and South American nationals who managed the three clubs.

The young women explained to the officers that they had accepted the work because of their ‘precarious economic situation,’ but that, once in the clubs, the managers had ‘imposed abusive conditions on them,’ because they had to work every day in never-ending shifts, and had to ‘hand over all the money’ obtained for their services.

According to police investigations, the managers of the clubs constantly moved the women from one premises to another to vary the offers for their clients, while preventing them from going to work in other rival clubs.

The police have carried out four searches, three in the various clubs and one at the home of one of the men, in which they identified more than 60 women victims and seized €20,000 in cash, assorted documentation, electronic devices and narcotics.

The operation is an on-going part of the Plan against the Mistreatment of Human Beings with the Aim of Sexual Exploitation, launched in 2013.