The “Operation Ocean” It has been ongoing since March and among the defendants there are businessmen, former judges, architects, politicians and teachers, who according to the prosecution, thanks to their social position, offered the minors money, drugs, clothes or yacht trips in exchange for sex.
Contacts were made through social networks, where the girls made it clear that they were minors. It is also investigated whether the death of a young woman who in the first instance had been attributed to suicide, could have been a murder.
“This all starts with the capture of a cell phone in a murder case,” he recalls. Luis Purtscher, President of the National Committee for the Eradication of Commercial and Non-Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents.
“It is the confirmation of several hypotheses that we had been following for quite some time since our field work. It has to do with the profile of the exploiters, where basically this relationship of unequal power is expressed in the fact that among them we have people with training and middle and upper class. They are men over 40 years old, ”he said.
The exploitation of minors, the greatest evidence in the history of Uruguay, has the particularity of Internet use.
“There is a change of scenery, of adolescent engagement that happened in the real world. It moves to the virtual world of information and communication technologies: basically cell phones and platforms that offer encounters and that facilitate the adolescent’s hook to become just another commodity in the sex market, ”explains Purtscher.
There could be more cases in Uruguay
The child exploitation It is not something new in Uruguay, says Luis Purtscher, adding that the official figures do not reflect reality at all because many cases are not reported.
“Uruguay has been presenting an average of 300 cases a year, a number that is growing every year from 50 to 60 cases. Exploitation is not new to us. We are denouncing and addressing it from different devices and we are generating a public policy for prevention, combat and to try to recover the quality of subject of adolescents who go through this type of situation, “he says.
The Operation Ocean It continues and there could be more arrests and charges in the coming days.
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