A 24-year-old man has been sentenced to just four years in prison for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl and forcing her to become a child prostitute in the French department of Loiret.
The 24-year-old, along with his 19-year-old female partner and another 27-year-old man, kidnapped the teen after she had run away from home in Val-de-Marne. They forced her into sex work in an apartment in the commune of Montargis, along with forcing her to go to hotels in Orléans and Blois.
According to a report from broadcaster France Info, the trio forced the girl to engage in dozens of sexual acts per day. The public prosecutor of Montargis, Loïc Abrial, said that the 24-year-old had been the “main pimp” and had put the girl under the supervision of the other two involved.
“The main pimp, 24, was sentenced to four years in prison by the criminal court. Two other defendants, a man and a woman, were sentenced to three years in prison, two [years] of which were suspended,” Abrial said on Thursday.
The three had initially been arrested in March but were left under judicial supervision until a verdict in their trial was reached rather than be placed in pre-trial detention, because of the Wuhan virus.
The case comes as child prostitution becomes a major problem in France, with several cases taking place in the last year. In one instance in Chaperon-Vert Gentilly, five men were arrested for forcing a 16-year-old girl to have sex 500 times in just five days after holding her in an apartment against her will.
The victim, who was also a runaway, eventually managed to get word of her abduction to police who were able to rescue her.
In the heavily migrant-populated Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, child prostitution is a major issue. According to an NGO report, a third of underage prostitutes in the area are under the age of 15, with some as young as six years old.
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