QCOSTARICA – A pensión located on Calle 4, between Avenidas 8 and 10, in the center of San José, was used by its administrator as a center for the sexual exploitation of women, a brothel.
This Tuesday afternoon agents of the Specialized Section on Gender Violence, Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants of the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) raided the short-stay hotel.
The administrator, a 63-year-old American named identified by his last name Clinton, was arrested at the site, where 10 women who worked in the place providing sexual services were found.
According to official information, the investigation began in December 2020, when the agents received confidential information that women were being sexually exploited in a pension in downtown San José. In other words, the manager of the premises allegedly hired women to engage in sex with customers, who paid between ¢15,000 to ¢22,000, of which an “important” part of the money was left to the administrator.
The American faces a criminal process as suspect in the crime of pimping (proxenetismo in Spanish).
Article 169 of the Penal Code punishes whoever “promotes the prostitution of persons of either sex or induces them to exercise it or keeps them in it or recruits them for that purpose to a prison sentence of two to five years. The same penalty shall be imposed on whoever holds another person in sexual servitude”.
The women found on the site, both Costa Rican and foreigners were cared for by a specialized team in order to give them protection.
