“One day the police called me and told me that they had saved my daughter. “They had found a plane ticket, the gang wanted to take her out of the country.” That’s how Juana (fictitious name) discovered that her underage daughter was one of the victims of the sexual exploitation network in the Murcia region. A network whose clients – well-known businessmen – would escape prison after ten years of delay in the legal process and an agreement between the prosecution and the defense. This decision was rejected by social organizations and political parties.
Ten years ago, the National Police found Juana’s daughter in a chalet in Zarandona (a district of the capital) managed by the Mrs and the alleged minor trafficker RKD. There, a businessman abused the minor. The rapist asked for a virgin minor. “Young and new” girls, as detailed in the indictment of the prosecution, from 2019, to which elDiario.es had access.
Two weeks have passed since the compliance agreement was reached. Juana learned on television that the businessmen and members of the conspiracy had been sentenced to terms not exceeding two years per offense. She also found out what her daughter will receive in compensation for being raped: between 500 and 2,000 euros.
“After watching the case on television, I called the court and they told me that we no longer had to go,” recalls the victim’s mother. According to the woman, the prosecution never consulted the victims about the agreement they would reach with the defense, where the mitigating circumstance of “very nuanced” deadlines was applied and facilitated the sentences initially requested, four years in prison for each crime, would be reduced to between five months and two years. Judicial sources specify that there is no obligation on the part of the prosecution to consult the victim about compliance agreements: “Neither here nor in any procedure are the victims called to listen to them. They are only summoned to appear in court and testify in the event of non-compliance.”
The representation of these minors, who had no private accusation, depended entirely on the prosecutor’s office. “They never told us that we had to look for a lawyer,” Juana explains. According to the mother, the young woman still does not know that a compliance agreement and its content were reached. He does not know that his rapists will not go to prison: “I don’t want him to know. It took me a long time to get him up and go out on the street. “If she had to live all that again, she would collapse.”
Juana denounces that the impunity of the case will encourage other exploiters of minors to continue their activity: “They have seen that it is a good deal to associate with a businessman, that they will go out into the streets and that nothing will happen to them. They have surely continued to act and will continue to act. The woman insists that “there are going to be more victims.” “I would not wish that on any mother.”
Captured at school
“We are a normal family,” Juana wants to clarify. Victims of sexual exploitation of minors are often associated with families at risk of social exclusion or with low resources, but the minor’s mother emphasizes that “all girls are at risk.”
“They had hired a girl from my daughter’s school to recruit other victims,” Juana explains. “I left my daughter at school and went to work. The girl was at school, that’s why I was calm,” insists the mother. The other minors had a similar experience: they were captured in their educational centers, in light discos or in advertisements on the Internet.
“The girl came home with my daughter, she asked me for permission to take care of a child with her. I told her to come back at seven in the afternoon,” the mother recalls. They put the minor in a car, threatened her and took her to the cottage where they abused her: “The hours passed, seven, eight, nine. He called her on her mobile phone, but her phone was off. “She came home late, her eyes swollen from crying.”
“I went to her room and asked her what was wrong, if something had happened to the child she was looking after,” Juana says. According to the mother, the girl repeated: “Mom, please, I can’t talk, I can’t tell you anything.” Her captors told the minor that if she talked, they would kill her family. Without knowing what had happened, Juana decided to give her daughter space and wait until the next day to talk to her.
The National Police told me that if the judge had not given the order to enter the chalet that morning, the traffickers would have taken my daughter out of the country.
“I didn’t understand anything. I don’t know how I didn’t die that day. The National Police told me that if the judge hadn’t given the order to enter the chalet that morning, the traffickers would have taken my daughter out of the country. And that once he left the country, he would never find her again,” he said.
To this day, the mother and daughter have not been able to talk about what happened to her: “We have not been able to fix it, it is getting very serious,” she says. Currently, her daughter does not go out alone: ”She goes with her brothers or her friends, but I notice that she avoids going out and prefers to stay at home,” Juana laments with disgust.
The mother wanted to thank those who attended the demonstration that took place a few weeks ago against the agreement: “It gave me a lot of strength to see the demonstrations, that people were fighting with us.” During the rally, several hundred people in front of the Provincial Court of Murcia demonstrated their rejection of the conviction “of the seven Murcian businessmen who were part of a network of prostitution of minors.”
Juana says that this sentence has made her relive everything that happened to her daughter. “It took away my health, I fell, I fell. “It all came back to me.” Despite this, the mother is going to fight and asks the prosecution that “at least the accused go to prison.”
A meeting of prosecutors is scheduled for October, during which Murcia’s chief prosecutor, José Luis Díaz Manzanera, will decide with the rest of the prosecutors whether to request prison for any of the accused. His decision does not bind that of the judge, who will have the final say on the imprisonment of the attackers and members of the network.
