Report Reveals Abuse of Moroccan Minors in Spanish Care Centers

This damning report from the Foundation presented a total of 50 episodes of physical and psychological violence recorded between October 2016 and June 2020 in reception centers for unaccompanied foreign minors in the Madrid region. It comes a few months after the murder of Ilias Tahiri, a Moroccan minor who died in 2019 in a reception center.

According to the Foundation, these acts of violence involved some 55 children and adolescents, aged 12 to 17, mostly male (girls representing only 5% of the total). They are mostly "Moroccan nationals who arrived alone in Spain".

Among the incriminated centers are the Isabel Clara Eugenia and Hortaleza residences, which are the largest in the capital and the country. In the children’s view, these attacks are orchestrated by the guards, educators or security forces. These are "punches to the face and head, kicks to the stomach, trampling on the neck, blows with batons and even bites". They are generally accompanied by "insults, humiliations and hateful messages" uttered by the aggressors.

The report also denounces the most common physical injuries, which are bruises, abrasions, trauma, contusions, pain, scratches, wounds, vomiting of blood and fractures that leave psychological sequelae.

Faced with this dramatic picture, about thirty complaints have been filed by the minors. At this level, the Foundation denounces "judicial proceedings" marked by "the lack of effective preventive protection (no adoption of protective measures), delays in procedures (children are forced to live with the people who would have assaulted them, are afraid and end up fleeing), the lack of consideration for the best interests of the minor and their vulnerable situation".