Léa was 15 years old and known among her peers for her dedication to sport and school. Maya, the same age, was, in her mother’s words, “a teenager like any other.” Both lived in Angoulême, a mid-sized city in France’s Charente region. Neither came from a broken home.
Today, their cases illustrate a crisis French authorities can no longer look away from: the organised prostitution of minors, driven by grooming networks operating with systematic methods and growing impunity.
The book Á Coeurs Perdus (which can mean both ‘Wholeheartedly’ and ‘Of Lost Hearts’ in French), published last year, which investigates the prostitution of minors in France, reconstructs the stories of the girls (appearing in the book under pseudonyms to protect their identity) with the help of family testimonies and court documents. The picture it paints is harrowing: Léa was forced into ten to twelve sexual encounters a day while kept under heavy cocaine intoxication. Her mother described the situation to Charente Libre in terms that capture the horror: her daughter had become the “white doll” of a group of men from the neighbourhood. She was held under threats, at times with a weapon pointed at her head.
The cases of Léa and Maya are not isolated. According to recent data from France’s National Observatory on Violence Against Women, 704 minors were recorded as victims of sexual exploitation in 2024—416 of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and 288 of prostitution. That figure represents a 43% increase over four years. Police warn that victims are getting younger, some as young as 12, and that 94% are girls.
Specialist NGOs estimate the real number of minors in prostitution could exceed 10,000, as a significant share of cases never reach official registers. Convictions for sexual exploitation-related offences doubled between 2017 and 2024, reflecting both the scale of the phenomenon and a greater—though still insufficient—judicial response.
The recruitment pattern described by investigators, families and social workers is one that begins with what France calls ‘the lover boy method’: young adult men who approach teenage girls under the guise of romantic interest. First contact is typically made on Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok, or in physical spaces frequented by young people—shopping centres, bus stops, school surroundings.
Over weeks or months, the recruiter builds a relationship of emotional dependency: gifts, constant attention, and providing a sense of protection. Meanwhile, the victim is gradually cut off from her family and social circle. Once the bond is strong enough, drugs arrive—cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis—, initially presented as part of a shared lifestyle. Then come the debts: for the substances, the accommodation, the accumulated expenses. And finally, the proposition: “see one client,” just once, to settle what is owed.
Maya’s father described the operational structure: while clients arrived, two men stayed in the adjacent room as “minders.” Girls were moved between cities—from provincial towns to Paris or Nice—and housed in short-term rental flats. The money they generated did not stay with them: a substantial portion went back to fund the logistics of their own exploitation.
One of the aspects researchers stress most is that victims do not fit the stereotype of girls from marginal backgrounds or dysfunctional families. Maya fell into the network after suffering a sexual assault in 2022 that sent her into a spiral of social withdrawal. When an intimate image was shared without her consent, she was relentlessly bullied by her peers. That void was what the network exploited.
Léa, for her part, began drifting from her usual routine after a sports injury disrupted her schedule. Her mother pinpointed the exact moment when contact with what she called “the network” began: the afternoons her daughter started spending in town.
What both families keep asking is how no one might have intervened sooner. Unexplained absences from school, sudden changes in behaviour, new clothes with no explanation, much older boyfriends: the signs were there, but the institutional response came too late, or not at all.
The sexual exploitation of minors through grooming networks is not a phenomenon unique to France. In the United Kingdom, investigations into so-called grooming gangs (or, less euphemistically, rape gangs) exposed the systematic abuse of tens of thousands of girls over decades. Government-commissioned audits have found that perpetrators come from a wide range of backgrounds and have warned against ethnic generalisations that ‘politicise’ the debate at the expense of the structural reforms actually needed. However, a nationwide inquiry led by Baroness (Louise) Casey, revealed that many public institutions—including police forces—ignored or downplayed the crimes involving gangs of predominantly Pakistani and other Asian-heritage men, while the victims were almost exclusively white girls.
In France, the issue has begun to enter public debate — though often through the lens of identity politics rather than analysis of institutional failure. While some political actors frame these cases in terms of immigration, social workers and affected families are demanding concrete answers: more places in specialist care centres, better training for teachers and social services, and more effective cooperation between law enforcement and digital platforms.
Snapchat, repeatedly cited for its role in recruitment and exploitation logistics, has drawn criticism for its slow cooperation with judicial authorities.
For families who manage to bring their daughters home, the rescue does not close the ordeal—it opens another, equally difficult one. Maya was moved to a specialist facility far from her hometown and temporarily stripped of her phone to sever the networks of control. Her father acknowledged the wound remains open, but said the family takes comfort in one thing: she is still alive.
Léa’s family lives with the constant fear of a relapse. And in the meantime, the network is looking for its next victim.
