Minors in care: what goes wrong makes them easy prey for sexual predators

Barcelona"In the end, I got in the car too, let him kiss me, and the man gave me some tobacco." The person who explains this is a 20-year-old woman who was under the guardianship of the General Directorate for the Care of Children and Adolescents (DGAIA) for much of her childhood. She never told anyone. The girl, who wishes to remain anonymous, lived in three different centers, the so-called CRAE (National Centers for the Protection of Children and Adolescents), where she lived with other minors who, for various reasons, were also separated from their families.

She wasn't surprised at all by the case of the 12-year-old girl who resided in a DGAIA center in administrative care (custody was maintained by her parents) and who between 2020 and 2021 was raped and sexually exploited by a pedophile ring. She says that sexual relations with adult men in exchange for gifts or money are the order of the day. "These situations occur a lot, because many of them are girls who have suffered abuse and are unaware of what they are doing," she says.

Professionals and organizations confirm that, unfortunately, this is not an exceptional case and hope it will serve to rekindle the spirit of an organization that has suffered several reputational crises over the years. In the case of this latest one, which also coincides with the investigations opened into the Audit Office and the Anti-Fraud Office for financing, Councilor Mònica Martínez Bravo He announced that his team will go to the end to find out what went wrong so that a protected minor was exposed to the depravity and violence of adults, and he emphasized the need to initiate "deep reforms" in the entity.

For UB professor Noemí Pereda, from the Child and Adolescent Victimization Research Group (GReVIA), who has advised the DGAIA and other similar entities in various autonomous communities, the main problem stems from the fact that people don't work—and, therefore, they don't work—and, therefore, their minor children don't work. In other words, social services need to intervene to "help" parents, with support and monitoring to avoid custody withdrawals and admissions to the CRAE (Centralized Family Planning and Rehabilitation Centers). "There are too many withdrawals, and too late," she asserts.

The origin: custody withdrawals

At this point, a social worker from a team that cares for children and adolescents – these teams depend on town councils and regional councils – admits to ARA that the professionals feel "overwhelmed" due to an excess of increasingly complex cases, making it difficult to address each case correctly. Thus, the situation within that home degenerates "until everything explodes" and the only solution is to separate the minors.

In a recent parliamentary response, the minister stated that there are 4,410 minors "under the radar" of the DGAIA (National Directorate of Justice). This means that work is being done with families to improve behavior and habits. It is in this group that the ombudsman, Esther Giménez-Salinas, emphasizes the importance of promoting "prevention" to leave the decision to remove custody "only for very serious cases," in which there is mistreatment or abuse. "Separation is traumatic for children and should be the last resort," she states, and insists on this line of work as soon as "negligence" is detected, such as truancy.

The reality, however, is that in recent years the number of institutionalized minors has continued to grow, now exceeding more than half of the 9,000 who have a protection measure. And, according to a 2023 report by the Ombudsman, Only 19% of children in care end up returning to their families."We must move from separating to protect to preventing to protect," the ombudsman insists.

R. uses "trauma" and "shock" to describe the feeling of entering a center. In her case, the first time was at eight years old, and she remained there until she came of age. "No one tells you anything, and you don't know why you're there, and even if you've been beaten up at home, it takes a while to come to terms with it and distinguish between right and wrong," she reflects. She's 23 years old and believes she's got her life on track. With no family members nearby, and despite the fact that "the educators do what they can," the center "isn't a family." "The girls there are rebellious; we find it easier to hang out with bad people because we've seen the dark side of life and have normalized many things, like sex," she explains. "At my center, two girls asked another girl to come with them for a blowjob in exchange for 50 euros," she continues.

The story of the victim of pedophilia also resonates with her because she remembers how friends from her CRAE were courted by men who showered them with money, gifts, or a few hours of recreation, unaware that they were, in fact, victims of sexual assault. "The girls told you it was nothing, that it was only five minutes and that they didn't feel anything," she says. In return, they returned to the center with clothes, money, a cell phone, or drugs after spending the afternoon or a few hours with a man, who in some cases might not be a father but a grandfather. These gifts became the main draw to "capture" more girls in a perverse and dramatic circuit. "There is prostitution, of course, and also abuse among equals, among children," says R.

Children arrive at the centers with a personal backpack full of trauma, neglect, violence and emotional deprivation, seeking "affection, someone to dedicate some time to them," explains an educator from a center managed by a third sector entity, who accepts that although they are told to "be careful," it is not always possible to protect the nois. Pereda indicates that these adults know how to find the loopholes of insecurity in the system and with lies and deceit they achieve the "emotional kidnapping" of these easy victims.

One of the great difficulties in creating a barrier between aggressors and children is, according to Pereda and Giménez-Salinas, the lack of training in detecting sexual exploitation and serious situations that social educators receive. The vice president of the professional college CEESC, Albert Font-Tarrés, agrees with this diagnosis, who speaks of how the outsourcing of the service to private entities and foundations means "precariousness" in the workforce, not only in terms of salary but also working conditions. There are a large number of staff from Low staffing levels, high turnover, and even abandonment of the profession, which leads to having to hire many professionals who "may not have the required qualifications." Educators explain that it's rare for the entire staff to be fully staffed during a shift.

Difficulty creating relationships

The minors in care also realize this, as they can't find an educator to follow up with them, a kind of guide to whom they can confide their worries or concerns. "They do what they can, but many are very young and haven't experienced half of what we have, so it's not easy with us," admits one of the girls. For the ombudsman, it's vital to create these "bonds" and maintains that this is one of the pillars that must be addressed if the system is to be put right. "No one explains anything; it's easy to assume you've had sex in exchange for a pair of shoes," explains one of the witnesses who spoke with ARA. And the professionals' questions are answered with "lies."

Bad behavior, such as returning late, is met with punishments similar to those of a family: prohibition on going out, withdrawal of cell phones, or eating with the children. In the event of an escape, the measures are intensified, and within a few hours, the educators notify the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police). However, Font-Tarrés also emphasizes the commitment of educators who detect unusual behavior and report it to school management. From there, as in the case of the sexually exploited girl, she asks, "What has the DGAIA done since then?"

Pereda chaired the commission of experts created by the Consell de Mallorca to investigate the network of sexual exploitation of supervised minors uncovered in 2019. From experience also in the study of other child protection systems, he ventures to assure that the case of the girl raped for two years in Catalonia is not an isolated case, because There have been cases in the United Kingdom, Andalusia, the Balearic Islands, and La Rioja. She cites data from Cantabria, where 20% of minors in care admit to having sex in the last year in exchange for gifts from an adult. This is the only region that provided the data for a report and stands out for having a network of small centers, with smaller ratios and greater oversight than those in Catalonia.

The expert maintains that the DGAIA has "ignored" the free EDRS tool, which helps educators assess the risks of exploitation in the event of a minor's escape. Nor has the position of the violence protection delegate, which the agency said in 2016 it would adopt to collect complaints, reports, and concerns from children within the center itself, been implemented. And while everyone agrees that the CRAE are not immune to the sexual assaults and abuse of minors that occur in society, Giménez-Salinas points out that children who were separated from their families to protect them are being abused, something that has not been done in this case.

Pereda frames sexual violence among these minors within the social whitewashing of prostitution and sexual exploitation and reproaches that the aggressors are called Addis Ababa sugar and appear in youth series without any criticism or reproach. And, on this point, she points out that pedophiles and exploitation networks are far ahead of professionals and the public when it comes to "capturing with deception and manipulation" girls who carry trauma and low self-esteem and are eager to find answers to basic needs that the system does not meet. "The only way we have to break the traumatic bond with the exploiter is to restore trust in an adult role model," Pereda points out. One of the minors in care explains that one of her classmates at the center works as a prostitute abroad, an option that is not "unusual," according to sources in the sector.

If the family's withdrawal is the last resort, the ombudsman and the professor also agree that the Generalitat must be able to increase the number of foster families to prevent minors from spending years locked up in a CRAE. But the Government admits there are no families, and families are wary of adolescents who are suffering from trauma. "We must guarantee a quick return to the families of origin," notes Giménez-Salinas.

And if entry is a "shock," what is leaving the center like? On paper, there is institutional monitoring (outsourced to entities) and assistance such as financial benefits and accommodation in apartments to facilitate the transition to adulthood; procedures that are now also being investigated. "I swear that when I walked out the door of the center, no one ever told me what it was like or how they could improve," responds R. The experts consulted believe her.