An Alicante provincial court has convicted a woman and a man of forcing Latin American women into prostitution from two homes in Villajoyosa and Benidorm.
It was considered proven that the woman, known by the nickname ‘Channel’, picked up two sisters from Colombia at Barajas airport in Madrid and took them to a home in Villajoyosa, where they were forced into prostitution ‘without protection or established rest breaks’, maintaining total control over them using cameras, according to the verdict as reported by state news agency EFE.
Eight days later, she moved them to another home managed by the second accused, where they were also forced to prostitute themselves ‘24 hours a day, seven days a week’, and ‘without going out in the street’.
It was also considered proven that both defendants took in three other women from Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and another woman from Colombia, to force them into prostitution by taking advantage of their ‘need to subsist’.
The female defendant denied the charges and claimed the women were prostitutes of their own will and ‘in a satisfactory manner for both parts’, while the man pleaded guilty and deposited €5,000 to cover possible compensation for the victims.
The court took the victims’ versions into account, after they collaborated with law enforcement as protected witnesses, to issue a guilty verdict.
The defendants were convicted of a total of nine sexual exploitation offences but acquitted of human trafficking.
The woman was convicted of four charges, for each of which she was given two years in prison, up to a maximum term of six years, and ordered to pay fines of €6 per day for 12 months.
Meanwhile the man received a year and a day prison sentences and six months of €3 per day fines for five counts of sexual exploitation, after applying the attenuating circumstances of drug addiction, paying reparations and his eventual confession.
The court also acquitted two other defendants of the same charges after concluding that both worked as prostitutes at the same homes but were not involved in managing the activity.
Lastly, the convicted man and woman were ordered to compensate the victims with between €19,000 and €20,000 according to each case, but they were granted leave to appeal.
