A Town Called Angers

(3 of 3)

How could such horrors have gone undetected for so long? Twenty-one of the 23 families implicated were under the supervision of social workers, who paid frequent visits to their homes, offering advice on employment and finances. One teacher dropped by some of the children's homes regularly as part of France's "educational assistance" services for students needing remedial help. Three of the accused men had been convicted previously of pedophilia, including Marine V.'s grandfather, who in 1991 was sentenced to 13 years for raping his son.

Officials from the regional council that oversees Angers' social services told Time that they had sounded the first alarm about possible sexual assault two years before police rolled up the prostitution network. At the beginning of 2000, at least one social worker alerted law-enforcement officials that some of the children might have been sexually abused, says Dominique Le Clerc, deputy director of social services for the Angers-based Maine and Loire council. Two more warnings came in 2001, when a girlfriend of one of the accused told social workers about the sexual abuse — more than a year before the man was questioned by police. Says Le Clerc: "We had suspicions, but the proof wasn't strong enough for them to intervene."

More than a year later, Franck V.'s children were briefly placed in foster care, where one child spoke of sexual assault. At the end of 2001, a niece of another accused told police she had been raped in 1999. Police then began an intense investigation. In February 2002, Patricia confessed to investigators. As the arrests accelerated, those not yet arrested burned key evidence, including photographs of sexual assaults, says Lollic.

A complex bureaucracy separates social assistance from law enforcement, so officials didn't follow each other's leads or grasp the enormity of the crimes. And social workers typically do not work on weekends or evenings, when, according to lawyers, much of the prostitution trade occurred. Yet officials say their social services are not under scrutiny. "The mission of social workers isn't to control families or be policemen within families, but just to help with families who are in difficulty," says Garnier, the local council official. While officials continue to say they did nothing wrong, the rumblings about institutional failure finally exploded earlier this month when police officers took the stand to explain what went wrong. Le Monde said Angers' police and judges were using "evasive justifications" about why they missed more than a year of warnings about child prostitution. And the town's local newspaper Le Courrier de l'Ouest said the police "with greater resources without doubt would have stopped the trafficking sooner."

Meanwhile, the children remain deeply traumatized. After an intensive period of psychotherapy, 40 have been placed with foster families in western France, while five are living with their relatives. Social workers and psychiatrists keep a close watch on them. Many of the children still have difficulties eating and sleeping, let alone speaking to strangers or studying at school, according to their lawyers. "There was a family omertà [rule of silence], like the Mafia," says Jacques Monier, who represents 11 of the children. "Now, there are children who regret denouncing their parents. They think it's their fault that they are on trial." Reconstructing the children's lives will be essential in breaking the cycle of incest that has endured in many of the families for generations. "This will be a very, very complicated task and will take many years," says Pierre-André Julié, a psychoanalyst in Angers. The children's wounds run deep. And like those of Angers, they will take a long time to heal.