Teenage migrant detained in Ceuta over alleged sexual assaults on children aged 10 and 11
A 17-year-old unaccompanied migrant minor was arrested in Ceuta after allegedly assaulting four children aged between 10 and 11 at the Piniers Centre. Staff at the centre claim that authorities are concealing what happened.
Arrest of teenage migrant in Ceuta over alleged sexual assaults on four children
It was the migrants themselves who alerted the National Police. According to eyewitnesses consulted by El Mundo, on Monday afternoon a group of residents at the centre beat the young man before officers took him away under arrest. "This needs to be told, because the authorities are keeping everything quiet," a source from the facility told the newspaper.
The detainee is a 17-year-old unaccompanied foreign minor (mena) of Maghrebi origin, arrested in Ceuta for allegedly sexually assaulting four children—two boys and two girls—aged between 10 and 11. The incidents are said to have occurred at the Piniers Centre, located in the El Príncipe neighbourhood, where all of them were living after crossing the Spanish-Moroccan border during the migratory surge on 30 and 31 July.
The young man is currently held at the Punta Blanca juvenile detention centre in the autonomous city. The investigation is being handled by the Family and Women's Care Unit (UFAM) of the National Police in Ceuta.
Assaults in the first weeks after the border crossing
The alleged sexual assaults are said to have taken place during the first two weeks following the massive border crossing, in which around 80,000 people participated. The Piniers Centre, which had been closed for years, was urgently reopened by the autonomous city to accommodate unaccompanied minors. The number of minors who arrived in that crossing would range between 1,500 and 4,000, according to the source consulted.
The number of victims could be higher, according to police sources cited by El Mundo. The young man is believed to have assaulted more minors in the context of chaos that has gripped the city for over a month, with around 9,000 migrants in conditions described as deplorable and with law enforcement overwhelmed.
Centre staff report institutional silence
News of the arrest, first reported by newspaper Abc and confirmed by El Mundo, spread rapidly among the facility's staff. "They are keeping everything quiet, the authorities are not informing us about what is happening," sources from the centre told the newspaper. These workers share, according to El Mundo, the widespread exhaustion felt by Ceuta's population over the lack of information about sexual assaults reported in recent weeks, which are linked to the mass arrival of immigrants.
The General Council of the Judiciary has sent reinforcements to the Gender Violence courts in Ceuta in response to the increase in cases recorded in recent weeks. The Public Prosecutor's office has also publicly alerted to this increase, a situation that Ceuta's mayor-president, Juan Jesús Vivas, has been denouncing for weeks. Vivas has repeatedly stated since the start of the crisis that Ceuta's women have been "self-confined out of fear" for over a month.
Source: El Mundo