This is how one mother tracked down the alleged abuser of her 17-year-old daughter on a local Cercanías train in Malaga

She only had a physical description, but with some very characteristic features. When the mother came across a man who fitted the profile during a train ride, her heart skipped a beat. "Everything went through my head," said Manuela (fictitious name). Even so, she pulled herself together and discreetly took a photo of the suspect.

She then sent it to her daughter on WhatsApp. "Is that him?" she asked her. "Yes, mum," the girl replied. Manuela had in front of her the man who had reportedly sexually abused her 17-year-old daughter on the short-distance Cercanías train that connects Malaga with the Guadalhorce district, where the family lives.

The incident happened on the morning of 19 August. The teenager had taken the train from Malaga to return home. Minutes later, a man sat down next to her and tried to strike up a conversation. He started asking her banal questions: where she was going, where she had taken the train, etc. She responded so as to not be rude. Then she leaned back and dozed off.

The girl believes that she fell asleep around the time the train was passing by Cártama station. It was eight or ten minutes before she woke up. When she did, the man was embracing and touching her.

As Manuela explains, her daughter was in shock and did not know how to react. She got up and walked away from him until she reached one of the train's doors. The man followed her and gave her a piece of paper with a phone number for her to call him if she wanted to see him again. He also told her that she was very pretty and that he wanted to spend a night with her. Manuela still does not understand how the other passengers did nothing when they saw the scene, considering the obvious age difference.

The girl didn't say anything when she got home, but her mother could sense that something was wrong. "Her face showed that something had happened. I asked her several times and she finally told me. She became very upset, crying and hitting herself because she blamed herself for not having reacted differently. I tried to calm her down, but on the inside I was horrified that he could have done something worse."

The pair went to a Guardia Civil station in the Guadalhorce valley to file a complaint for sexual assault. They provided the piece of paper with the phone number, which Manuela had tried to call. "It was switched off, although there were a couple of half-erased numbers and I'm not sure if I dialled it right. I don't even know if it was really his," she says.

While the Guardia Civil processed the complaint, Manuela decided to try and find the man herself. She is a regular user of the Cercanías train for work reasons, so on each journey she would go through the carriages in the hope of finding him. She had a clue, a very characteristic feature of the suspect's physique: he is an albino, an inherited genetic condition that causes an absence or reduction of melanin, the pigment that colours hair, skin and eyes.

The woman searched for him daily until she found a man fitting the description on 23 August. She discreetly took a photo and sent it to her daughter, who confirmed that it was him. She immediately called the Guardia Civil. A patrol waited for him at Álora station, but could not locate him because he probably got off at another stop. "I don't know what happened, but he was not arrested that day."

Manuela continued looking for him every day. On 25 August, while looking for a seat, she saw him again. She called the Guardia Civil again. This time they managed to arrest him inside the train. Her daughter was relieved. "She jokes that I'm her hero," the mother says.

The suspect, of Northwest Africa origin, appeared in court, but he was released "He was not given a restraining order and the trial is in the spring," Manuela says, upset with the turn of events. She now feels afraid for her daughters, as there is a possibility that they might encounter him on the train again.