PAEDOPHILE gangs are targeting unaccompanied migrant children in the Canary Islands as overwhelmed care homes struggle to keep track of thousands of new arrivals.
Youngsters have been disappearing from care homes dotted across the islands, often in resorts packed with tourists who have no clue of what is taking place in front of their eyes.
The warning comes after 13 girls were taken from a Lanzarote reception centre and trafficked into the European mainland.
The minors disappeared from a migrant reception centre in Arrecife between November last year and May this year.
Detectives say they were moved through a chain of safe houses set up in Spain before being taken towards France, where a grim fate awaited them.
The case began to unravel in May when police intercepted three girls at Lanzarote Airport attempting to board a flight to Madrid with an adult Mauritanian man using forged documents, the Telegraph reports.
Shockingly, one of the supposed minors was later found to be an adult woman pretending to be underage.
Officers investigating the disappearance of the remaining girls uncovered what they described as a ‘perfectly organised network’ linking criminals in Morocco, Ivory Coast and Spain.
Fraudsters in Ivory Coast allegedly produced fake identity documents, while contacts in Morocco arranged transport and border crossings.
Safe houses on the islands and the mainland were used to conceal the minors before transferring them on.
It highlights mounting fears that overwhelmed facilities across the archipelago are being exploited by professional pimps and child abuse networks operating between West Africa, Spain and other parts of Europe.
Nearly 28,819 Africans have reached the islands so far this year, compared with just 462 a decade ago, according to Frontex, the EU’s border force.
Close to 6,000 underage migrants are now living inside 86 foster homes on the islands, representing 37% of all unaccompanied minors in Spain.
Many centres are overcrowded, understaffed and unable to control the comings and goings of teenagers who are legally allowed increasing independence as they settle in.
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Francis Candil, the Canary Islands’ deputy minister for social welfare, admitted authorities cannot keep the children under round-the-clock supervision.
He said many minors begin leaving the homes regularly ‘to go to the movies, go to activities’, adding that staff are constantly trained to improve detection but ‘we live in a world where monsters exist’.
Regional officials say there are currently 300 open cases of children who have absconded from foster care.
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