The incidents of child prostitution increased by 68% between 2016 and 2020.
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Each year in France, between 7 000 and 10 000 children are victims of prostitution, according to the voluntary sector. Alarming figures which are undoubtedly underestimated. Monday, February 28, the government is therefore launching an awareness campaign against this scourge. Spots will be broadcast on television, on social networks or in the cinema and prevention workshops will also be organized throughout the territory. To better understand the profile of these teenagers, a new report will be made this Monday to Adrien Taquet, the Secretary of State in charge of Children.
Most of these minors are young girls, they are between 13 and 17 years old and live under the influence of a pimp. How many are they in total? Impossible to quantify it, but no French police station would be spared. “Today it is the daily lot to come across a minor victim of pimping”, says Elvire Arrighi who heads the Central Office for the Suppression of Trafficking in Human Beings. According to the report submitted to the government today, incidents have increased by 68% between 2016 and 2020.
“They are extremely easy prey because they are often out of family and school. Pimps present themselves as benchmarks and place them under their influence.”
Elvire Arrighi, Director of the Central Office for the Suppression of Trafficking in Human Beingsfranceinfo
The phenomenon has been amplified by social networks. This was discovered by Jennifer Pailhe, a Toulouse woman who got her daughter out of this traffic. “Prostitution today is very different from twenty years ago, she explains. They are no longer young girls on a street corner under a lamppost. There are all these images that teenage girls put on social media where they strip naked to get views. They are not aware of the danger of screens.
Pimps, barely older than their victims, seek to lure teenage girls. That’s what the police call “the Zahia phenomenon”from the name of this prostitute who became a star of the networks. “There is a form of glamorization of prostitution, analysis Elvire Arrighi, So that they do not consider themselves victims of something which is nevertheless abominable. This phenomenon of online prostitution has intensified over the past two years, in particular due to successive confinements.