Her exploiter’s eyes were on her for 24 hours. From the moment she woke up she was monitored so she wouldn’t spend too much time with any of the men who paid for sex with her so that at the end of the day she would hand over all the money so she wouldn’t think about it to run away. Until one day in early January, when her captor made a mistake and the girl was able to run, until a National Police patrol found her. On January 10, he sat down in front of two agents to tell his story: “It all started when I met a guy on Facebook…”.
Three years and seven months passed from the beginning of this conversation on social networks until the police car was stopped. The victim, now a protected witness, was then living in his native Romania when one day he received a message from a stranger and they started talking. She was 20 at the time, and he filled her head with illusions for three months. So many that she finally got on a plane with the promise of a job in Spain in the family business that her boyfriend believed in. Arriving here, he met deception, albeit gradually. They explained to him that there was a problem with the job he was going to do and that he had to work on the streets temporarily. “My sister will be with you, she will too,” he assured her.
That’s how he ended up on the main street of the Marconi industrial area in Madrid, known for years as one of the epicenters of prostitution and drugs, which has recently changed. “We were surprised by the nature of the exploitation, because now the focus is on the apartments, the scenery of the polygon is not the same as it was a few years ago,” says Tomás Santamaría, group leader at the Immigration and Borders Service of the Province of Madrid Brigade. “It’s impossible to calculate how many floors are used for prostitution, it varies a lot, they close one, open three…” he admits, lamenting the difficulty of prosecuting these crimes on private property.
The technique of flattering women is well known to specialized agents: it’s called lover boy. “The boy falls in love with her, he promises her a life in Spain that later isn’t real. They used to have to drive to the countries of origin and pick up the girls, for example at the discotheques. Now there is no need to travel, they do the same through networks,” he elaborates. Once at the destination, threats and a beating will follow if he refuses to obey her orders, regardless of the woman’s condition. “They threatened to send her family photos and screenshots to her family and reveal what she was really doing in Spain, and that was terrifying for her,” says Santamaría.
Small groups
The macro-organizations involved in human trafficking have also lagged behind. “It still exists, but what we find above all are small groups in which each member has a specific role and controls a group of women,” says the police officer. In this case, the family business was limited to these two brothers, he was 30 years old and she 32 years old. While the man arrested her and checked the accounts, the sister kept watch and sometimes engaged in prostitution. The brothers held her in an apartment a few meters from the road, where they exploited her for 10 to 12 hours a day. They came and went for a walk every day. Police have not found in the time they have investigated that she has enslaved more women.
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Both were arrested at the end of this year. In October, the woman was tied up and a month later it was his turn when he entered the airport after getting off the plane from which he was returning from Romania. “He came back when he thought everything was quiet here, but we had everything under control and we knew he would return to Madrid that day,” explained Santamaría. Thanks to the data provided by the victim, the investigation was able to corner the perpetrators. “It’s rare for someone to denounce, in which case the victim could take advantage of a mistake. Sometimes we received the complaints from prostitutes anonymously via the complaints phone number (900 10 50 90), it is not normal that they want to get involved,” the inspector confirms. This victim found her deliverance by running through the streets of a polygon until she escaped her captors.
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