It’s a crackdown in Isère against a pimping network. A 16-year-old girl and four other people were indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on Friday in this case, we learned on Saturday from the Vienna public prosecutor’s office.
One of the four men, all aged in their twenties, imprisoned alongside the young girl, is also being prosecuted for rape of a minor under the age of 15, said public prosecutor Olivier Rabot, confirming information from the Dauphiné Libéré.
Facts in several departments
The teenager is suspected of having led a network which forced minors, through violence or at gunpoint, to prostitute themselves several times a day in apartments rented on Airbnb in Vienna, in the Lyon region as well as in in Cannes in the Alpes-Maritimes.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the young girl, followed and placed for several years by child welfare, lured the victims, minors who had run away or had broken up with their family, via social networks by offering them a roof under which to take refuge. Some of his relatives, arrested between Tuesday and Friday, were responsible for renting the apartments, driving the victims there, or monitoring them when they were with clients.
At least three victims
In mid-July, two of the victims, born in 2009, filed a complaint at the Besançon police station in Doubs, according to the prosecutor, saying they had suffered physical and psychological violence in this context from mid-June. An investigation was then opened by the Vienna police station and this made it possible to “travel” back to this pimping network, explained Olivier Rabot.
A judicial investigation for aggravated pimping was therefore opened and its objective is “now to determine whether there are other victims”, indicated the prosecutor, specifying that she is now aware of “at least a third” victim.