Sexual exploitation and assault: The dark side of Magaluf jobs that lure thousands of Brits each year
SHIVERING from head to toe, podium dancer Coral Atkin tries to find warmth under the bar’s outside heater. Wearing only a bra and hot pants, her glittery skin sparkles under the strip’s flashing neon lights. It’s 1pm and for Coral the night is just beginning in the most notorious party resort in the world — […]
SHIVERING from head to toe, podium dancer Coral Atkin tries to find warmth under the bar’s outside heater.
Wearing only a bra and hot pants, her glittery skin sparkles under the strip’s flashing neon lights.
It’s 1pm and for Coral the night is just beginning in the most notorious party resort in the world — Magaluf.
Her job is to entice punters into her bar with cheap thrills and get them wasted on booze.
But behind her bravado and beaming smile is a broken girl who feels ashamed and abused.
Desperate to pass gruelling job trials, the 20-year-old tells how she’s faced violence and sexual assaults on shifts.
While this behaviour would be alarming back in the UK, Coral, from Shrewsbury, Gloucestershire, explains how it’s “part and parcel” of life as a worker in the ruthless Punta Ballena strip.
She tells me: “It’s very dangerous being a dancer here. In the past I’ve been punched three times in the face by male punters while working in a popular nightclub and nothing happened to them.
“On average, I get touched up five or more times a night. No one ever gets kicked out.
“Back in the UK they’d be arrested but that’s normal here because the bars want to make money. It’s also incredibly competitive.
“Despite being a size eight I couldn’t get a job at another bar this April unless I’d lost 5kg off my legs and weight off my stomach.
“If you do get a job trial, as soon as someone better looking comes along you’re out the door.”
Coral’s casual matter-of-fact explanation shocks me. But more worrying, her story is not an isolated case.
A Sun investigation found many British teenagers out here enduring a similar fate — working illegally, living in squalor and being routinely sexually assaulted at work.
Our disturbing findings come just a year after The Foreign Office warned Brits heading to Majorca to be wary of ruthless employers following an inquiry into workers being at risk of modern SLAVERY.
Desperate workers push dangerous drink deals and banned pub crawls on vulnerable tourists — ignoring the mayor’s recent restrictions to curb antisocial behaviour in the resort.
As a result, every night the deafening music along the strip is drowned out by boozed-up revellers entangled in brawls.
It was in this violent climate that a petite 19-year-old British soldier Sydney Cole allegedly slashed her Army pal Sarah Garrity’s throat with a broken bottle, after 14 hours of boozing.
They had been enjoying a free bar at the workers’ opening party at Carwash.
Sarah almost bled to death but decided not to press charges against Sydney, who told a court in Palma the glassing was a boozy “accident”.
And as I walk up and down the strip, I meet more first-year workers with horrifying experiences.
Shanell Nelson, 19, from Birmingham, reveals how they’re forced to push dangerous drink deals on vulnerable tourists.
She says: “We are not allowed to help them if they pass out. I work as a PR for a bar and I hate it.
“My boss thinks it’s OK to grope me and he tells me to wear skimpy clothes and flirt with male punters to keep them drinking. If they pass out sick no one cares.”
Many youngsters pay hundreds of pounds to recruitment agencies to secure safe accommodation, guide them through job trials and help them settle in.
Many of the workers I encountered tell me how they came out with Select Magaluf — whose head rep David Potts stars in ITV2’s The Weekender.
Hannah Eve, 19, a waitress from Wales, claims: “I watched the glossy show and thought I’d be living the dream when I came out. But as soon as they got my money they disappeared. I was left in a crummy apartment with limited hot water. Every night I call my mum crying because I want to go home.”
Hannah tells how she lasted two hours on a job trial at a rowdy bar.
She says: “I hated it. I was working as a PR, trying to get punters into the bar by offering cheap drink deals. The manager wanted me to get in their faces and stop them walking past.
“I wasn’t confident enough and hated the sexual harassment you’d get from punters saying stuff like, ‘I want to take you home to have sex’ and ‘I’d ruin you.’
“Sexual exploitation is rife here. I went for a drink at another bar and a guy who worked there said, ‘Drop your pants’. He was trying to pull them down himself in the middle of the bar. He wanted me to put on a club-branded skimpy thong — like they make all their shot girls do.”
Hannah explains how she struggles to sleep most nights due to the frequent terrifying’ fights outside her apartment.
Wincing, she says: “Every night there is violence. They ply them with cheap booze then abandon them. It’s scary.”
Her friend Shanell, who also came out with Select agency, adds: “After 13 hours on my feet I take home just 40 euros (£34) in cash. I just want to go home to somewhere secure and safe, but my apartment isn’t fit for a dog.”
The Sun gained access to a high-story block called “Complex’’ — one of the accommodations Select house their first-year workers. As our pictures show, the flats are a far cry from the glossy snaps advertised on Select’s website.
I see Elliot Smith, 19, from Bournemouth, looking forlorn with a bandaged arm and dragging his suitcase with a pal from his apartment.
Elliott said: “We’re getting out of this dump. A fire broke out in an apartment a few floors above my flat and I couldn’t get out.
“It’s badly designed as you need a key to open the front door from the inside. My mates had gone out and had taken it. We weren’t given enough keys for all five of us.
“I was trapped inside. Terrified, I put my arm through the window but there were metal bars on the other side. I thought I was going to die and was screaming for help.
“Luckily a guy heard me and kicked the door in. I went to hospital and needed 16 stitches in my arm. The next day I complained but all I was told was I needed to pay for the broken window. It was unbelievable. I could have died.
“They had put us in a cockroach-infested dump, which had soiled sheets. The washing machine was broken.”
His friend, William Foster, 19, also from Bournemouth, chips in: “Our other mates took one look at the apartment and booked their flights straight home. It’s shocking.
“Every week the landlord sends a guy round with a boxer dog to collect 100 euros weekly rent even if you don’t have a job. They bring the dog to intimidate us. If you don’t have the cash you get thrown onto the streets.”
He also tells me how male touts and PRs are told by some bar bosses to grope female tourists to get them into venues: “It’s disgusting. We are not going to assault girls to get them in for a drink.
“That’s sick. Elliott and I wanted to work collecting glasses or at the bar. But the only job trials going for boys are PRs.”
Select claim on their website to help the youngsters open a Spanish bank account and secure a NIE social security number, so they can work legally.
But all the youngsters we met were working illegally.
In one WhatsApp message obtained by The Sun, their online rep Jessica Love-Clewett told a worker struggling to find work that getting an NIE number was a “waste of time”.
Last night resort rep for Select Danny Powell, who initially denied being an owner of the company but later admitted to being a joint owner, said: “These allegations are not true. We’ve been running this company for about four years.
“They’re not bad apartments. I can’t help a fire happening. The apartments are basic and modern, I can’t say 100 per cent that there’s never been a cockroach in there but we live in Majorca. The way I see it, we tell them, ‘Here’s your accommodation, we help you find it but from now on you deal with Marty (the man who collects the rent for the landlord)’.”
When I ask him about the claims youngsters get thrown out onto the streets if they can’t pay it, he replies: “What can we do? Can we pay their rent for them?
“Some people go out every night and get drunk, they spend all their money then can’t afford their rent. That’s because they went out every night. We supply accommodation like we promised, but we don’t collect the rent and it doesn’t go to me.
“The accommodation isn’t going to look amazing as they’ll end up breaking them. They’re first-year workers, they’ll get drunk and kick their doors in when they lose their keys, write on the walls in lipstick and smoke inside.
“The apartments are standard. You’re not spending much time in the rooms, you’re out working and here to have a good time. Other companies out there do not provide the services we do.”
Back on the strip, the first flushes of the summer trade are beginning to emerge.
The stag and hen dos from the spring trade slowly give way to the hordes of students and youngsters drawn to Magaluf’s promise of a good time all the time.
The hotels fill up and more bars get braced for scorching months of roaring trade.
And as their doors swing open, the sound systems pump out pounding dance rhythms, drowning out the cries for help at the resort built on misery.
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