A criminal network of child rapists has just been uncovered in Brittany, involving five men, headed by a man well known locally as an LGBT activist and member of the far-left party La France Insoumise (LFI). Faced with the horror and seriousness of the facts, the media and the French Left are curiously silent.
The case was uncovered by the newspaper Le Parisien, which revealed the actions of Pierre-Alain Cottineau, a 32-year-old carer, now suspected of having handed over young children for whom he was responsible to paedophiles.
The facts are unbearable. The victims are mainly very young children—the youngest is said to be barely six months old—subjected to acts of rape, barbarism and aggravated torture. Some of them were given drugs.
The main criminal was identified from material seized by the police during an investigation into a network of paedophiles operating on the darknet. He was already known to the French justice system: in September 2024, he was indicted after the discovery of filmed acts of rape and barbarism on a severely disabled 4-year-old girl in his care. The child was using very distinctive medical equipment, which was recognised on the seized videos, and which made it possible to trace it back to him.
Police said that he organised ‘horror meetings’ at his home or in places specially rented for this purpose in order to hand over his young victims to an international network of paedophiles recruited via encrypted messaging.
Until September 2024, Pierre-Alain Cottineau was seen as the ideal young man: a separated father, he was known in Nantes’ community organisations as the president of the association “Esprit Arc-en-ciel” (Rainbow Spirit), which defends the rights of LGBT people. He organised the region’s first Gay Pride in 2022. He was also involved in the fight against domestic violence. At the end of 2023, this home care assistant and former Red Cross volunteer rescuer had obtained accreditation from the Departmental Centre for Children and Families, a structure responsible for the emergency care of children aged 0 to 18. It was this background—apparently flawless according to contemporary standards of public service—that gave him access to all these children.
For the investigators, although accustomed to the worst, the images collected are deemed “unwatchable” and reveal profiles of extreme perversity, given the young age of the victims. But for the moment, the case is not receiving anywhere near as much media coverage as the Mazan rapes, which involved a woman who was repeatedly drugged and raped. Why this media silence?
The reason is the suspect’s background, and his commitment to the far-left and the LGBT cause, which explains the embarrassed silence of his comrades-in-arms. Apart from Le Parisien, only the right-wing media immediately seized on the case.
Martial Bild, editor-in-chief of the right-wing website TV Libertés, was outraged at the general media silence and deplored the fact that AFP took more than two days to publish a single dispatch on the subject.
The Observatoire du Journalisme, an independent organisation tasked with identifying any ideological bias in the media, emphasises that the report on Cottineau on the national television channel TF1 deliberately chooses to conceal the nature of his politics and presents him as a citizen who is “very involved in social care,” without providing any further details.
A parallel investigation has been launched on X for several days to try to learn more about the character and his relationships. Web archives show that Cottineau boasted on social media that he took children in distress into his home, as a sign of his ‘social’ fibre. We also learn that he stood in the local elections in 2021 under the banner of the far-left LFI, and on that occasion received the support of party figures who now sit in the National Assembly, such as the deputy Andy Kerbrat, who was caught red-handed buying drugs yet still a member of parliament.
A search of the social media profiles of LFI deputies or of the left-wing press is sadly instructive: it’s omertà. No one dares to address the Cottineau case, even though at the same time, another scandal revealing rapes and violence against children, but this time involving a Catholic institution in the south of France, Notre-Dame de Bétharram, is widely commented on by the same people. The case of the left-wing newspaper Libération is particularly eloquent: even though Cottineau has been identified since his detention in September, not a single line has been published about him, while 63 pieces have been devoted to Bétharram. Martial Bild paints a disturbing picture, listing all the organisations that have been involved with Cottineau, directly or indirectly, or that have entrusted him with responsibilities. None of them came forward.
Affaire du réseau pédocriminel Cottineau. En l'état, 4 jours après les révélations sur ce réseau de l'horreur absolue.
— Martial Bild (@BildMartial) February 25, 2025
– Silence radio de LFI dont Cottineau était membre, cadre et candidat
-Silence radio ou omerta de la presse de gauche ( Le Monde, Libération etc.)
-Silence radio…
This case is reminiscent of that of the left-wing journalist Jean-Philippe Desbordes, convicted in November 2024 of the rape and torture of his own stepdaughters. The journalist’s pedigree is impressive, as he was for years a member of the editorial staff of the main mainstream or left-wing French media: Le Canard enchaîné, Charlie Hebdo, France Info and Libération. None of these media organisations has made amends for having employed him for years. Needless to say that such revelations concerning a right-wing personality would have given rise to a national scandal.
