Police raids rescue childrenĪs a result of the Channel 4 News report above, Colombia Virgins for Sale, several police raids have taken place in the city of Medellin to rescue children who are being sexually abused and exploited. It’s a shocking new criminal world thriving in Medellin – with criminals formerly of the drugs trade now trading in women. They come here because they can’t get what we offer anywhere else.” Before we sent coke to the world, now the world is coming to us. “The product has changed but we are still providing services. He doesn’t look like a Colombian criminal from Hollywood he looks more like a young raver. We are still at war but you won’t see the weapons in the street.”Ĭhino is well dressed and has clearly been educated. “We don’t want to heat up the barrio so you won’t see any bodies lying in the street like before. “I lost count of how many people I have killed, I don’t want to remember,” he said, while joking about how they dismember the bodies and dump them in the canal to leave no evidence. Now, he looked no older than 30 and says he has murdered dozens of people. He was proud when he told me that he killed for the first time when he was just 13 years old. Murdered dozens of peopleĬhino never met Escobar but he admired him. We walked and talked about Escobar, the paramilitaries, Farc and the current peace process in La Havana. The local boss – Chino – came out to a shop to meet me. Then one night two boys picked me up in a car park in Medellin and took me up to a barrio controlled by “The Office”. It took several months of meetings to convince them to allow me to film them. They are not the type of people that like cameras or journalists. I wanted to meet the new generation of criminals in Medellin. “They will have to kill me if they want to take my daughter, my life was ruined and I don’t want them to do the same to her.” Incredibly, she tells me that she also was a victim of sexual abuse when she was young. She has no means to move to another barrio. Her daughter is just 14 and the gangs have already warned her that they have somebody willing to pay lots of money for her daughter’s virginity.
She lives in one of the poorest barrios in Medellin. I met several victims of the gangs but most were too scared to go on the record. Virgin girlsįirst they offer just girls, then for more money you could have underage girls and then the golden prize for those willing to pay: “virgin girls”.
Gangs like “The Office” realised the potential business they had in front of them. On the corner you could see the gang members looking around, controlling the barrios.Īfter Medellin was “pacified”, tourists started to flock to the city looking for cheap drugs and for sex. The place looked like the end of the world. Many of them are incredibly young smoking bazuco, a Colombian version of “crack”.
The back streets are full of prostitutes, both male and female. When you are out in the city you realise why he said that. A Colombian man once told me that “if you put a roof over Medellin it would be the biggest brothel in the world”. ‘Biggest brothel in world’Įscobar himself was known for paying thousands of dollars to have sex with models, actresses and even television presenters. Money has never been an obstacle for them and in a city used to the flow of easy money, everything has a price. The narcos have always had an appetite for beautiful women. Today “The Office” is not only involved in drug trafficking but also in extortion, prostitution and human trafficking. Years later they developed into one of the biggest criminal organisations in the history of Colombia. They started literally as an office where anyone could hire a hit man.
La Oficina – or “The Office” – is one of the most notorious groups that sprung up. But soon, criminal gangs started to appear to fill the gap. When Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993 the Medellin cartel was left without a boss – and most of the assassins, traffickers and foot soldiers were left without a job. Unfortunately the years of evil and greed have marked this city for life, and the beauty hides a violent and disturbing criminal underworld. I have been travelling to Medellin for nearly 20 years and during that time I have witnessed the city’s mutation from one of the murder capitals of the world to one of Colombia’s booming cities.