Underage girls working in prostitution is a growing crisis in France, and the victims are not always from poor broken families. In a new book, “Lost Hearts,” it reveals a new crisis of teen prostitution from the small city of Angoulême in the Charente region, revealing the case of local children swept up in the horrifying world of sexual exploitation.
One 15-year-old girl, Léa, was forced into 10 to 12 sexual encounters per day while being kept under the heavy influence of cocaine.
Her mother paints a chilling picture, stating, “My daughter had become ‘the white doll of the blacks of the Champ de Mars. She became their thing: they made her do anything and paid with drugs.”
According to media outlet Charente Libre, the girl lived in a state of terror, “often with a weapon held to her head.”
🇫🇷🔴Child prostitution in France has risen by 43% over the past four years.
French police are identifying “younger and younger girls” being trafficked.
Last year, 704 minors were registered as victims, 416 victims of pimping and 288 victims of prostitution, according to newly… pic.twitter.com/KV5qvvqiwI
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 17, 2026The descent into this lifestyle often begins in otherwise stable, middle-class homes. Maya and Léa, both using pseudonyms, were once typical teenagers. Maya’s mother remembers her as “A teenager like all teenagers,” while Léa was known for her dedication to school and athletics.
For Maya, the turning point was a sexual assault in 2022 that led to a spiral of declining grades and emotional withdrawal. After an intimate photo of Maya was leaked, she was relentlessly bullied. Her mother says, “Everyone had seen her breasts, everyone called her a whore,” an experience her father describes as being “worse than a bullet.”
This social isolation made her vulnerable to predators. After multiple suicide attempts, Maya began running away, eventually being found by police in a dazed state. Her father compares the ordeal to being “caught in some kind of bad Netflix series.”
A similar shift occurred for Léa after a sports injury left her feeling aimless. Her mother noted that she became more withdrawn and began spending her afternoons in town. As she explains, “In fact, this is where contacts with what I call ‘the network’ began.”
Grooming gangs in France
While the United Kingdom has long been documented to have grooming gangs operating across the country, which exploited, raped, and abused tens of thousands of British girls. The same reality is ongoing in France, as this new book illustrates.
As Charente Libre describes, the exploitation is driven by a calculated grooming process involving “lover boys,” young men who feign romantic interest to exert control. These predators are supported by logistics experts who handle drugs and bookings for sex. Maya’s father explains the setup: “When guests come, the two men stay in the next room to play protectors.”
Despite the abuse, the girls often remain emotionally bonded to their pimps. Maya felt responsible for her exploiter’s imprisonment, and Léa’s mother describes the moment when they tried to separate Léa from her abuser: “She was ready to do anything for him. It’s a sick grip. When we picked her up, she had a blank stare… We were everything she rejected, and he was the good man.”
Drug addiction creates a powerful bond with the men. Similarly, Maya was moved between cities like Nice and the Paris region, where she was kept in a constant state of intoxication. Her parents recount, “What happened there, she doesn’t remember anymore, it was drugs galore. Cocaine and ecstasy were found in her blood test. They were shooting her up only to have her raped. She didn’t get rich, far from it. She had wads of cash in hand, but she had to give 50 percent to pay for the Airbnb and the drugs.”
For the girls who are rescued, that is just the beginning. Maya has been placed in a specialized care facility far from her hometown, stripped of her phone to break the cycle of influence. Her father admits the trauma remains deep, but finds solace in the fact that she is safe, noting, “There, we’re just happy that she’s still alive.”
Léa’s family is also navigating the fear of a potential relapse and worry that her daughter could once again turn to her old lifestyle.
There are many victims, however. Just last year, Remix News reported on the story of Afghan Farhad Kamawal, who was found guilty of targeting young girls at a child welfare center, luring them to his home with alcohol and drugs before selling their bodies to customers. All of these cases are adding up to a crisis.
Child prostitution crisis
Child prostitution in France has risen by 43 percent over the past four years. French police are identifying “younger and younger girls” being trafficked.
Last year, 704 minors were registered as victims, 416 victims of pimping and 288 victims of prostitution, according to newly released figures from the National Observatory of Violence Against Women.
The vast majority of these minor victims are female, totaling 94 percent. A significant portion of the sex trade involving underage girls is conducted through social media platforms, including Snapchat.
Convictions for sex crimes — such as pimping, aggravated pimping, soliciting a prostitute, aggravated prostitution, and operating a brothel — doubled between 2017 and 2024. French authorities estimate that there are currently 40,000 people engaged in prostitution across the country.
