The Sickness That is France

The trial of 66 French pedophiles opens today:

Franck Vergondy, a 36-year-old welfare recipient, was the very picture of banality as he stood answering questions in court last week, accused of orchestrating the largest child-sex ring ever prosecuted in France. It is being called the biggest criminal proceeding in the country's history, a case with 66 defendants, 45 victims, 60 lawyers and 225 witnesses - a trial so enormous a special courtroom had to be constructed to accommodate it.

It took three days to read the 430-page description of the charges: a litany of horrors portraying a group of parents and friends who passed around their children for sexual pleasure; who sold prepubescent bodies for cigarettes and booze; who sipped coffee in Vergondy's government-financed apartment while their toddlers screamed "it hurts" in the next room.
Twenty-seven of the accused are women. The victims, girls and boys, ranged in age from six months to 16 years. Some of the defendants have confessed, lawyers said.

...No social worker has lost a job over the affair, lawyers said, and there has been no separate government investigation beyond the criminal trial, where some social workers will be called as witnesses. The French news media are covering the Angers pedophile case more as a criminal drama than as a failure by the government to protect its weakest citizens.
Child advocates are calling on the government to expand the investigative authority of social workers and to improve coordination with law enforcement. But they are doing so in decidedly measured tones.

"To attack the social services and find somebody responsible is not a helpful debate," said Guenaelle Madec of La Voix de l'Enfant (Voice of the Child), a national advocacy organization that works closely with the government.

"The abuse took place within the family circle, which makes it very difficult for others to see what's happening," Madec said. "These people also were unemployed, so they had almost no contact with other people outside their families. Also, it took place in a small city;... in France, outside of Paris, it's a different way of thinking, where you keep secrets in the family."

The housing development was middle-class - "You could live there, I could live there," Deputy Mayor Michelle Moreau said - but the Vergondys and their friends were not. Neighbors said the children were ill-clothed and unkempt and the apartment was messy. Most of the defendants were living off France's generous welfare state, and some are barely literate.

A US born lawyer describes the feeling in France as "fatalism". Do crimes like this happen in the US? Yes they do, but Americans tend to be extremely outraged when they do. We've all heard what happens to child molesters in prison. The French by contrast are not even a little shocked by this account.