Five people suspected of being at the head of a pimping network were indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on Friday, we learned on Saturday from the public prosecutor’s office in Vienna (Isère). They are very young: a teenage girl aged 16 and four men in their twenties.
One of the four men is also being prosecuted for rape of a minor under the age of 15, said public prosecutor Olivier Rabot, confirming information from Dauphiné Libéré.
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 (Alpes-Maritimes).
Minors in family breakdown
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.
In mid-July, two of them, born in 2009, filed a complaint at the Besançon (Doubs) police station, 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, explains Olivier Rabot.
A judicial investigation for aggravated pimping has been opened and its objective is “now to determine if there are other victims”, indicates the magistrate, specifying that he is now aware of “at least a third” victim.
