PROFESSIONAL paedo gangs and pimps on the Canary Islands have been exposed trafficking vulnerable children to evil sex rings on mainland Europe.
The horrific case of 13 young girls being trafficked into sexual slavery in France unearthed a wider twisted network of predators exploiting the islands’ overrun care home system.
Eleven of the alleged pervs were arrested in a raid last week in connections with the girls’ disappearances between November 2024 and May this year.
Two homes were searched in Lanzarote, where officers seized personal documents, electronic devices and cash.
Four of the suspects are currently being held in pre-detention on charges including human trafficking, child-pornography offences and document forgery.
It is believed that the girls were smuggled out of a migrant reception centre in the Lanzarote capital, Arrecife, before being moved through a system of safe houses through mainland Spain and into France.
The case comes at a time when authorities on the Canary Islands are struggling with an unprecedented wave of illegal migration from Africa.
Nearly 30,000 Africans have arrived in the Canary Islands this year on rafts or wooden canoes, according to the Telegraph.
That number is up from 462 a decade ago per figures from Frontex, the EU’s Border Force.
In turn, young African migrants are being targeted as authorities struggle to keep tabs of their whereabouts in the crumbling care system.
The island’s foster homes are crammed to near breaking point with almost 6,000 underage migrants.
The 86 homes on the island now hold more than a third of all unaccompanied minors across the entirety of Spain.
An investigation codenamed Operation Triton uncovered the system of paedos in West Africa and Spain, who organised fake IDs and border crossings to move the children undetected.
The probe was launched after three of the missing girls were intercepted accompanied by an adult Mauritanian man attempting to fly them to Madrid with forged papers.
One of the three was later revealed to be an adult.
The criminal gang reportedly has links to Morocco and the Ivory Coast and payments are allegedly funnelled through crypto wallets to throw investigators off the scent, according to Visa HQ.
Private vehicles are then allegedly used to funnel the children across the Pyrenees undetected.
Francis Candil, the deputy minister of social welfare of the Canary Islands government, told online Lanzarote newspaper La Voz that personnel are working hard to stem of the flow of child sex slavery on the island.
He said: “We are permanently training our staff for detection, trying to improve situations and protocols.
“The reality is that we live in a world where monsters exist.
“For the children in protection in the autonomous community and for those in normalised families.
“There could be mafias behind this, unscrupulous people.”
It comes after an evil Romanian sex ring was revealed to be luring younger and younger underage victims to our shores, before delivering them “Uber Eats-style” through grotesque online “orders”.
Operating behind the walls of ordinary-looking homes, girls as young as 12 are being forced to have sex with up to 20 men a day, whose sickening desires are being fuelled by a troubling wave of ‘barely legal’ pornography.
Sold at a premium price as “fresh meat”, some victims are trafficked so young that they can’t remember their age, so upon rescue, they have to have their teeth assessed by dentists.
Others are beaten so badly by their traffickers and clients that they can’t walk, or even crawl.
While offline, Romanian mafia gangs – who are among the trafficking rings netting more than £100,000 in annual profits per victim – brazenly roam our nation’s streets.
“Such mafia groups are not at all worried about the police,” adds Marcus, who specialises in sex crime for Cheshire-based PCD Solicitors. “Crime pays, and sex crime pays even better.”
