Several high-profile cases of child sexual exploitation have triggered growing concern in Switzerland after investigators uncovered a grooming network operating from a Geneva barbershop where teenage girls were reportedly sexually abused for money over an extended period.
Swiss authorities arrested eight men during a police operation at the premises, including the business owners and suspected customers. Prosecutors allege that multiple underage girls were exploited at the shop over the course of more than a year, Junge Freiheit reported.
The youngest known victim was 14 years old, while investigators currently believe at least six minors were involved.
Authorities in Geneva and Vaud have identified about 90 young people believed to have been caught up in serious sexual exploitation. However, Marc Zingg of the Geneva cantonal police told Swiss public broadcaster SRF in December last year that the true figure could be far higher.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s difficult to say whether it’s 100, 200, or 300,” he said.
The most prominent case in recent times began with a barbershop near Geneva’s hospital. Police raided the premises in May and arrested eight adult men, including people connected to the business and alleged customers. The suspects are being investigated over alleged paid sexual acts with minors and encouraging minors into sexual exploitation. Geneva prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation and have declined to give further public details.
Zingg described the exploitation scene as “extremely secretive” and “discreet,” and said police were struggling to reach what was happening out of sight. “We don’t have it under control. It takes place underground,” he said.
In a separate video report published by SRF, a teenager identified as Sarah gave an account of her experience, who said she was 16 when she began going to the Geneva barbershop. She described a setting that began as social and then drew her into drug use and paid encounters with adult men.
“Little by little, we went there every day. The people were nice, it was a party,” she said.
Sarah said she began using cocaine and other drugs there. She also said the manager told the girls to ask for money if adult men wanted sex.
“It was the manager who told us: if they want to sleep with you, you say yes, but you ask for a banknote,” she said.
Asked whether the men could tell she was a minor, Sarah replied, “Yes. They could guess it, but they had to want to guess it.”
She said she did not regard herself as a victim at the time. “I was living my life. I said yes. Nobody forced me,” she said.
That attitude, according to specialists cited in the report, is one of the reasons these cases are difficult to uncover. Some exploited girls believe they are making their own choices or controlling the situation, while failing to recognize that adults are taking advantage of them.
Sarah said she had been sleeping rough and repeatedly running away from home during that period. She later ended up in a residential facility, but said she was still able to leave regularly. She now says she suffers nightmares and flashbacks.
“Even when I dream, scenes come back to my mind. I feel as if I am reliving them,” she said. “But I am doing my best to get through it.”
Police and social workers say social media and online advertisements are also being used to connect minors with adult men. RTS said it had seen exchanges between girls and potential customers, including a proposal for a minor to meet an adult man in a cellar in the Geneva area for 60 Swiss francs.
The recent revelations from Switzerland mirror separate investigations across Western European countries, including Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, where grooming gangs are operating far more prolifically.
Earlier this month, Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe used a Westminster Hall debate to confront MPs with harrowing testimony from White girls and women who were raped, tortured, trafficked, and degraded by migrant grooming gangs, and abandoned by the very authorities that should have protected them.
He then read out a series of graphic testimonies that exposed the scale of the abuse suffered by almost exclusively White girls. One survivor said she was only “about 12, nearly 13” when a man raped her before forcing an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle inside her and breaking the glass. Another described being held down by groups of men as they took turns to rape her, before beating her and threatening to kill her and harm her loved ones if she ever spoke out.
In one of the most disturbing accounts read to MPs, a survivor recalled seeing the back of a van opened to reveal “15, 20 girls locked in dog cages.” Another said dogs were brought in during an attack while men stood around filming, laughing, and betting on what would happen. She said she had nowhere to move and was raped by a dog while a man held her face and stared into her eyes because “he wanted to see me break.”
Lowe also read testimony from a survivor who said she was raped by “probably about six or seven hundred different men” over three years after the abuse began when she was 13. Another said abuse escalated around Eid and holidays, when parties became “bigger, worse, and more violent,” with more men and more girls involved.
Similarly disturbing accounts have also appeared across France and Germany. In the former, a new book published last month called “Lost Hearts” revealed a new crisis of teen prostitution from the town of Angoulême in the Charente region, revealing the case of local children swept up in the horrifying world of sexual exploitation.
In it, the mother of one 15-year-old girl revealed how her daughter had been forced into 10 to 12 sexual encounters per day while being kept under the heavy influence of cocaine.
“My daughter had become ‘the white doll of the blacks of the Champ de Mars. She became their thing: they made her do anything and paid with drugs,” the mother said.
Last month in Germany, Bavarian state police revealed the dismantling of a migrant grooming gang accused of exploiting underage girls by luring them with gifts, getting them hooked on hard drugs, and then demanding sex in exchange for further supplies.
In a statement published on Thursday, Bavarian Police said investigators found growing evidence that members of the drug scene were deliberately approaching young girls from unstable family and living situations. The men identified so far are described by police as predominantly of Syrian, Pakistani, and North African origin.
The suspected exploitation centered on Nelson Mandela Platz near the city’s main railway station, as well as nearby areas including Südstadt and Celtispark, which have long been known to police for drug crime.
