Police in Girona have arrested three people on charges of abusing children in an illegal juvenile ‘brat camp’ for teenagers from Switzerland.
There are reports that the children were kept shut up in cages made for wild boars when they refused to work or said they felt ill. One said he had been inside a cage for eight hours every day over a period of three months.
Italian born Lorena Elizabeth B, aged 30, her partner Armin Markus S, 44 a Swiss national and 60-year-old Raymond N from France have admitted keeping the youngsters in animal sheds and depriving them of food but deny hitting the children.
The police investigation began when national police in Figueres came were alerted when a 14-year-old boy was found wandering around the local train station. He told them he had escaped from a juvenile centre in Sant Llorenç de la Muga, because he was being mistreated there.
Police raided the premises and found five teenagers who are believed to have been mistreated by being shut in wild boar shed no bigger than a metre square..
The unlicensed centre allegedly received 4,000 euros a month per child to treat the children’s supposed behavioural problems.