France puts 66 on trial for paedophilia ring

FRANCE opened one of its biggest and most horrific paedophilia trials yesterday, where babies and children were allegedly raped, sexually abused and prostituted by their parents for small sums of money, food parcels and cigarettes.

Sixty-six defendants, some facing up to life imprisonment, were brought before a court in Angers, western France, that was specially built to hold them all. One by one, the 39 men and 27 women were asked to stand and give their age, profession and address.

Investigators found that 45 children - aged from six months to 14 years - were raped and sexually abused from 1999 to 2002 by their parents or others who paid money or food. People who are thought to have worn masks while they raped the children are still feared to be at large.

“The children speak of one tattooed woman who is not in the defendants’ dock,” said Pascal Rouiller, a defence lawyer for five suspects.

The victims will not appear in court; their testimony has been videotaped.

Many of the defendants are from low-income households in the working class Saint-Leonard neighbourhood of Angers, 165 miles south-west of Paris. Some were reportedly abused themselves as children.

Three couples at the heart of the suspected paedophilia ring lured their children and those of their relatives “to play doctor” with the adults, the newspaper Le Monde reported. One young girl was allegedly raped 45 times.

Psychological counselling was being offered to the jurors and the six judges to help them cope with sordid testimony expected from the trial scheduled to last four months.

Defence lawyers planned to argue that government social workers, who worked with many of the suspects turned a blind eye to signs of abuse.

Some of the defendants cited in the 420 page indictment are illiterate and do not fully understand the charges against them, lawyers said.

In French trials, defendants do not plead guilty or innocent at the start of proceedings. But court officials said that about half of the accused had admitted their involvement in the alleged crimes during questioning.

Three people face life imprisonment if convicted of raping minors under age 15 and of active participation in the prostitution ring.

Another 36 people face up to 20 years imprisonment for similar charges.

Nineteen face a maximum of either seven years or ten years in prison for sexual abuse and corrupting minors. The last eight defendants risk three years imprisonment for allegedly failing to report the crimes.

“To my knowledge, we’ve never seen a criminal case of this magnitude in France,” said Rouiller, the defence lawyer.

The shadow of another paedophilia trial in the northern town of Outreau last year hangs over the case. That trial exposed shortcomings of the justice system because some defendants were wrongly accused.

The Angers case first became known in November 2000, when a 16-year-old girl alleged she had been raped by her mother’s boyfriend and his brother.