The government presented, on November 15, an interministerial plan intended to understand, prevent and combat the prostitution of minors. This phenomenon would mainly affect young girls, and they are currently between 7,000 and 10,000 prostituting themselves.
franceinfo: How to explain that a teenage girl can come to prostitute herself?
Claude Halmos: The 7,000 to 10,000 young girls who prostitute themselves are between 15 and 17 years old, and some have even started at 14 years old. This is dizzying and can be explained in two ways: by sociological causes, and by others, psychological, which refer to the personal history of each of these young girls.
Among the sociological causes there is the idea of easy money (not necessarily linked to family insecurity since today, adolescent girls from all walks of life prostitute themselves). There is the existence of networks which allow to move easily, and almost magically, from the idea to its realization. And there is especially the inflation of pornography which gives adolescents the idea that sexuality comes down to a series of practices that one could learn and reproduce, like any gymnastics, without being the least of it. world, affected.
And the psychological reasons?
When we listen to women, young or not, who prostitute themselves, we realize that the money they seek is often an unconscious attempt to compensate for the fact that they think they have no value in themselves. . And it is always linked to their history. Some were used sexually as objects by adults as children. Others, even without aggression, have never been respected either in their families or elsewhere.
And most never felt that they were of value to their parents; that their person, their body, their life were priceless to them. What every child needs to feel worth, himself. When you put your body up for sale, even at a high price, you give it the status of a commodity, by definition interchangeable, and therefore of no real value.
What could be the consequences for these young girls and what can be done?
The consequences are always very heavy for these young girls, especially since they are at an age which should be that of the construction of their adult sexuality. To prostitute oneself at 14, even if you think you are doing it voluntarily, is to steal from yourself, without knowing it, the construction of this relationship so fragile, so particular to everyone, and so important between the body and the emotions. And the question arises of knowing if it is catch-up, and how.
It is the same problem as a baby whose construction of the relationship to food is upset by severe deprivation, due to a famine, for example. And then these young girls very often experience traumatic situations, because of their pimp or their clients. It would therefore be urgent to do, at school (where we can reach all children) and from the smallest grades, prevention work. Today it is essential.