The Guardia Civil’s Judicial Police Team in Puerto Rico de Gran Canaria (Mogán), as part of Operation Kurnia, has investigated a 59-year-old German for seven crimes of sexual abuse and intimacy. The man, who runs a massage parlour located in Patalavaca, on the south of Gran Canaria, is accused of having taken advantage of his clients by touching and/or recording them with hidden cameras over more than a decade between 2005 and 2020.
The Guardia Civil went to the Massage Centre to carry out the initial checks of the possibility of a crime, and discovered that in the massage room, where the alleged sexual abuse took place, there was a spy camera recording the massage table area.
They obtained 82 video files with recordings of some 20 naked women receiving massages from the man under investigation
As a result of the visual technical inspection and a search of the public establishment, investigators seized all devices on site suspected of being able to store videos and images of the alleged victims, detecting a second device with a hidden camera.
Throughout the investigation, the Guardia Civil studied and forensic analysed memory devices, on which at least 82 video files were found, containing recordings of some 20 naked women who had received massages while the women were seemingly unaware that they were being recorded with the hidden cameras.
The suspect had been running the massage centre in a tourist and residential complex in Patalavaca for more than a decade with a large portfolio of Spanish and foreign clients.
Locating the victims
Investigators have requested collaboration with German police authorities, to assist with a case of a German victim, dating back to 2005 having been discovered.
The alleged perpetrator has been detained by order of Investigating Court No. 1 in San Bartolomé de Tirajana
The various lines of inquiry over time led the investigators to identify three women, a minor and two adults, who had been recorded naked with spy cameras without their consent between the years 2019 and 2020. The minor, a girl, and an adult women had been victims of sexual abuse in the performance of massages, amounting to a total of four victims, increasing the criminal charges against the suspect. The Court of Instruction No. 1 of San Bartolomé de Tirajana ordered his detention in prison without bail.
Request for citizen collaboration
The Guardia Civil are continuing to analyse the images in order to locate and identify other women captured by the video recordings. For this reason, they have requested citizen collaboration, and in particular, national and/or foreign women who may have been victims of unreported sexual abuse in the municipality of Mogán, whilst recieving a professional massage, and/or suspect that they may have been recorded without their consent between 2010 and 2020.
If you have any type of information in this regard, you can directly contact the Judicial Police Team in Puerto Rico by calling the telephone number 928 15 27 20 or by email at gc-puertorico-epj@guardiacivil.org
