The National Police has arrested in Madrid a man accused of sexual cyberbullying of minors after an investigation initiated following an alert on the internet related to a possible suicidal behavior of a minor victim. The police action allowed locating the suspect in less than 24 hours, culminating in his arrest at a home where he lived in unsanitary conditions.
The detainee, considered a groomer —a term used to describe sexual predators who contact minors in digital environments—, used fake profiles posing as a minor to gain the trust of girls through social networks. Once the relationship was established, he requested intimate material and sexual video calls, even offering amounts between 100 and 300 euros in exchange for explicit content.
The investigation was activated when agents received an alert linked to a social media post in which a minor showed signs of suicidal ideation. From that alert, investigators managed to reconstruct the suspect's activity, who also had several previous search warrants issued by different courts, one of them with an order for imprisonment.
According to police information, so far at least five victims have been identified, although it is not ruled out that more cases may appear during the course of the investigation, which remains open. In one of the detected episodes, the accused shared content obtained from the minors with third parties when they refused to continue with his demands or to arrange in-person meetings.
