“Permanent preying on unprotected or inadequately protected children”
“Permanent preying on unprotected or inadequately protected children”
by Manfred Paulus, Chief Superintendent retd., Ulm
Nobody should be surprised by the following report and no one should consider it to be exaggerated. Whether we are willing to observe and admit it or not, being sexually abused or sexually exploited in other ways has already been a basic risk of childhood in Germany (and perhaps also in Switzerland) for a long time.
And greatest danger always occurs when children are taken out of their familiar surroundings, when the commonly existing protective mechanisms fail.
Of course, surely not all of the 10,000 or more missing children are in the clutches of so-called paedophiles.
But due to all previous experiences it is likely that this paedophile and paederast (preference for boys) scene has set out to hunt refugee children traveling alone and being unprotected or inadequately protected. And, unfortunately, it can be assumed that it is not unsuccessful in these endeavours.
Also after the natural disasters in Haiti, Thailand and Nepal, to name just a few examples, reports went round the world about this scene’s immediately befriending those children, who had suddenly become help- and defenseless.
I foresee quite considerable danger for those children who come to the west via the Balkan route.
On this route, there has been a perfectly developed infrastructure for decades as regards traficking in women and children for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It would indeed be naive to assume that the traffickers operating there would not attend to the unaccompanied refugee children.
German and Swiss criminologists have several times in the past verified the fact hat there are connections and interconnected groups – even in Germany and in Switzerland – of (potential) offenders fixated on children in their sexual orientation. So an extremely secretive, locally and globally acting criminal group was unmasked, that had permanently been on the hunt for unprotected or insufficiently protected children. (“Hunting is as exciting and as gorgeous as the catch,” one of them said).
As early as at the stage of smuggling, unaccompanied minors are already in very substantial danger of being sexually exploited.
But even in Germany “helpers”, that are not always helpers, are waiting for them.
From a criminological perspective, there seems to be an urgent need of professionally working through children’s potential escape experiences and of effectively protecting unaccompanied refugee children against impending sexual exploitation by suitable measures directly from the moment of their arrival.
But there has as yet been no mention of this. After all, this kind of criminality is not consistent with our standards and ideals at all. •
(Translation Current Concerns)
Nearly 5,000 refugee children missing in Germany
cc. On 3 February, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” reported: “According to the Federal Criminal Police Office several thousand minor refugees cannot be accounted for in Germany.”
The report continues: “Earlier this year, almost 4,800 unaccompanied minor refugees were at least temporarily reported missing in Germany.” “Unaccompanied minor refugees” are minor refugees unaccompanied by parents or guardians. A spokeswoman of the Federal Criminal Police Office is quoted as saying, 4,749 unaccompanied refugees in childhood and adolescence were counted as missing on 1 January 2016. 431 of them were younger than 13 years, 4,287 were between 14 and 17 years old and 31 were over 18. Half a year earlier, the number of missing unaccompanied refugees had been 1,637.
Earlier, the European Police Authority Europol reported that over the past 2 years at least 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children disappeared after arriving in Europe.
The newspaper quoted a spokesman of Europol: “This does not mean that something happened to all of them. Actually some of the children might presently be staying with relatives. But it also means that these children are at least potentially at risk.”
The President of the German Child Protection Association is quoted saying that in these circumstances children are “easy prey” for criminals. Often they are not registered, and as long as they are not in care anywhere, they are “without rights and protection” and could be exploited particularly easily.
Furthermore in the report it is mentioned: “Europol also has evidence that those criminals who had initially profited as human smugglers and traffickers of the refugees, are now de facto trying to enslave the refugees or to exploit them sexually. The public must assume that these missing children are not ‘hidden somewhere in the woods’, but that this is happening ‘right before our eyes’”.
In the European Parliament, several members requested information on the over 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children. In a letter to the European Council, they pointed out that the missing minors might have become victims of pan-European criminal organisations that could misuse them for sex work, slavery or even organ trafficking.
Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 3 February 2016
(Translation Current Concerns)