Two French departments have been accused of failing to keep children in care from falling into prostitution. The French state and individual departments share responsibility for child welfare services, which have been accused for several years of failing in their obligations.
Two lawyers on Wednesday said they had asked two of France's departments for an administrative review of their child welfare services, for failing to protect children who fell into prostitution.
“This is a scandal on the level of the state,” Michel Amas, a lawyer in Marseille who lodged the notice with the Bouches-du-Rhone department in the south-east of France.
He and fellow lawyer Olivier le Maillou, who lodged a similar request for review to the Esonne department south of Paris, sent letters to the presidents of the departments, detailing the cases of two minors placed with the Aide sociale à l'enfance (ASE), or child social welfare service, who had become prostitutes.
“It is unacceptable in France today for 12-year-olds to be prostituting themselves while under the protection of the state,” Amas wrote.
Minimal supervision
Some 396,900 minors are in the care of the ASE, after judges removed them from their families because of danger or neglect.
The ASE is administered on the departmental level, and some children – particularly older teenagers – are not put into foster care, but are housed in hotels or shelters, where advocates say they are left with minimal supervision.
"In every shelter there are girls who prostitute themselves. They prostitute themselves because there is no supervision,” Amas wrote.
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“They leave their shelter in the evening, they get money, new clothes… And at no point do the social services pass on the information so that we can address it from the outset.
“We're launching this alert because we have no weapon against this, which involves thousands of children in care."
After the letters were sent, the president of the Essonne department announced an administrative enquiry and reaffirmed that the protection of minors was a priority.
A system under pressure
The two lawyers said the problem goes beyond these two departments. Amas indicated that a similar preliminary appeal would be lodged with the Yvelines department, west of Paris, at a later date.
According to a report published in early April by a parliamentary enquiry commission into the ASE, some 15,000 children in their care are victims of prostitution.
The ASE has been under pressure for several years, faced with dropping budgets, a shortage of social workers and burnout of those working in the field.
"There are a huge number of malfunctions in the child welfare system, not just the failure to comply with court rulings,” Lyes Louffok, a campaigner on children's rights who wrote a book detailing the abuse he experienced in care, told RFI.
“Today there is widespread institutional abuse, where children are taken into care in very poor conditions, with extreme over-crowding that can sometimes be enormous. In the Dordogne department, for example, ASE shelters are at 140 percent capacity.”
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Both the government and the departments have acknowledged shortcomings, but regularly pass the buck, with departments claiming that budget cuts keep them from fulfilling their obligations, especially in the face of growing numbers of unaccompanied foreign minors arriving in France.
France is facing a complaint filed with the United Nations’ Committee on the rights of the child for “serious and recurrent violations” of the rights of minors entrusted to the ASE.
This committee, made up of 18 independent experts, has no power of enforcement, but ratifying countries have agreed, in principle, to respect its recommendations.
(with AFP)
