have Internet users unearthed an underground world of child sex trafficking?

On social networks, French explorers explain having found remains of a nativity scene in underground galleries. This video, which has millions of views, has been shared by numerous conspiracy accounts around the world. These images have been interpreted as evidence of an underworld of child sex trafficking. What do we know about this video? After some research, the “True or False” teams found the old stone quarry where these images were filmed. Cataphiles, explorers of underground quarries, guide the France Télévisions teams. This quarry was notably requisitioned by the Germans during the Second World War. The hopscotch engraved in the ground and the drawings on the wall Scrooge and Sonic are still present.

A wrong video

After exploration, it is not an underground nursery or a child’s prison, but settings created by the explorers. “It’s combining elements that have no connection with each other and trying to create a mythology that doesn’t exist”, notes cataphile guide Gilles Thomas. Other places have also been set up in the quarry, such as a fortified castle, or even a prehistoric room where dinosaurs have been sculpted in stone. Thus, the video posted on social media, which claimed that this career was proof of a pedophile conspiracy, was incorrect.

Among Our sources

Gilles Thomas: civil servant at the city of Paris and underground historian of the Paris region

Author of the works “Paris Underground Shelters”, Editions Parigramme, 2017 and “The Catacombs, History of Underground Paris”, Editions Le Passage, 2016.

Article from Le Parisien

Career Hennocque-Bélier

Hennocque quarry in Mery Sur Oise by Pierre-Henry Muller

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