Draft:Angers pedophile network

The Angers pedophile network case is a French criminal case in which sixty-two people were convicted of sexual abuse committed against forty-five children aged from a few months to 12 years old, between 1999 and 2002. Some of the accused are parents and grandparents of the victims identified.

Investigation
The case begins when a complaint is filed inNovember 2000by a 16-year-old girl, who denounces rapes committed between 1991 and 1993. The alleged perpetrator of the attacks is already in prison, having been sentenced in 1996 to ten years of criminal imprisonment in another case. Investigators from the Angers juvenile brigade are interested in the brother of the accused, Éric Joubert, who was also sentenced in 1997 to a two-year prison sentence and one year of probation. Since his release inMarch 1999, this thirty-year-old has relationships with single mothers. InFebruary 2002, one of them denounces her ex-partner, who allegedly abused her 5-year-old daughter.

On the sidelines of the investigation, Éric Joubert's associations are studied and a couple attracts the attention of the police. These are Franck and Patricia Vergondy, parents of four children, quickly suspected of being at the center of a child prostitution network. The case takes on a media dimension onM arch 8, 2002, with the publication of several press articles and the broadcast of a report on the 8 p.m. news of France 2. Around twenty victims were identified and five people were indicted for “rape of a minor under 15 years of age”, “aggravated pimping” , “complicity in rape” and “failure to report a crime”.

In the days that followed, details, described as “sordid” by the public prosecutor, were revealed in the media. In addition to the incestuous nature of the crimes, the age of the children, ranging from 6 months to 12 years, as well as the scale of the network shocked investigators and public opinion. Coming from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds, the families involved prostituted their children in exchange for sums deemed “insignificant” by the prosecutor. However, the investigation reveals that Franck and Patricia Vergondy received 150 to 300 euros per week, sums considered significant for a family living on social benefits.