704 Minor Victims in 2025: Five Men on Trial as France's Child Prostitution Rate Rises 43%
October 26, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
French law enforcement recorded 704 minor victims of prostitution in 2025, a 43 per cent rise over four years. Five men go on trial this week in Lyon over one such case, while none of the paying clients face prosecution.
France recorded 704 minor victims of prostitution in 2025, a 43 per cent rise over four years, according to figures published by the National Observatory on Violence Against Women, under the interdepartmental body MIPROF.
The total breaks down into 416 victims of pimping and 288 victims of exploitation through recourse to prostitution, MIPROF reported. Ninety-four per cent of the recorded victims are girls. In 2024 the count stood at 659. A 2021 government estimate, cited by Brussels Signal, placed the actual number of minors in the prostitution system between 7,000 and 10,000, meaning official records capture only a fraction of the reality.
Against those figures, five men face trial at the Rhône Assize Court this week, from October 26 to November 2, charged with aggravated pimping involving a 12-year-old girl referred to in proceedings as Louna. None of the men who paid to use her face any charges, according to rmx.news.
Police found Louna in a rundown apartment on Quai Gillet in Lyon's 4th arrondissement in June 2022, six days after she ran away from a campsite in southern France where she was staying with her grandmother. A client recognised her from a missing-person flyer and called police, as reported by Le Progrès and cited by rmx.news. She had bruises, knife cuts, and cocaine in her bloodstream. According to rmx.news, prosecutors say a 19-year-old named Moha and accomplices groomed her online, coerced her into using cocaine, and managed her prostitution. Using the now-defunct website Coco, they forced her to see roughly 30 clients in a single week. The group threatened physical violence if she did not generate between 500 and 1,000 euros a day.
Digital platforms now play a central role in recruitment. The MIPROF study, reported by franceinfo, found that 86 per cent of the minors accompanied by the Amicale du Nid, a French non-profit supporting victims, were contacted by clients at least partly through Snapchat or online advertisements in 2025.
French authorities attribute part of the recorded rise to improved victim identification by police and support associations rather than an absolute increase alone. The enforcement response against buyers is thin. MIPROF figures reported by Brussels Signal show just 1,442 fines were issued to clients across France in 2025, with large disparities between regions. Convictions for pimping and aggravated pimping roughly doubled between 2017 and 2024, according to Brussels Signal, yet prosecution of the demand side remains minimal.
Aurore Bergé, the minister for gender equality, told Le Figaro, as cited by Brussels Signal, that sexual exploitation of minors is now one of the most alarming manifestations of the prostitution system in France. She described victims' bodies as a resource to be exploited, controlled and monetised. The rise has occurred despite the 2016 law designed to combat the prostitution system and fund exit programmes, Brussels Signal noted.
Child protection services and support associations, as reported by Brussels Signal, identify unaccompanied foreign minors as among those most at risk. Some placed in children's homes or emergency accommodation have been targeted and recruited directly from those shelters, the same report notes.
Five men face trial in Lyon this week, and not one of Louna's clients faces a charge. France counted 704 child victims last year.
Published October 26, 2026 · Frisian News