Brutal child sex network smashed

PARIS - A court has handed down heavy sentences after the biggest paedophilia case in French history revealed how a network of parents rented out dozens of children, including a 6-month-old baby, to criminals in exchange for money, cigarettes and tins of food.

After a trial that left France reeling with brutal tales of routine incest and rape, more than five dozen people were convicted in the central western town of Angers. Five ringleaders, several of them already convicted sex criminals, received prison time of more than 100 years.

Full identification of the suspects was banned to protect the identity of the children, and the victims themselves were spared the ordeal of courtroom testimony by giving pre-recorded evidence.

The case horrified France, both in its details and the discovery that the abuse went on for three years, from January 1999 to February 2002, without police or social workers noticing anything amiss. In the 15-week trial, none of the defendants expressed any remorse or showed any indication that they had done anything wrong.

The main accused raped and abused their own children, and allowed family members, neighbours and friends to do the same.

"One child's parents sold her for a new car tyre," said prosecution lawyer Philippe Cosnard. Other children were bartered for small sums of cash, cans of food or cigarettes. A girl of 10 was raped by more than 30 adults.

One of the instigators was 59-year-old sex criminal Philippe V, who had previously been jailed for raping his own son.

This time, he was jailed for 28 years, with a minimum term of 18 years, for abetting the paedophile ring and for raping one of his granddaughters.

His 35-year-old son, Franck V, was given 18 years for raping three of his own children. Franck's former partner, Patricia M, 32, was jailed for 16 years for raping one of her daughters and for renting out her children for sexual abuse.

"Franck V is the kind of man who should be segregated from our society for a long time," said prosecutor Yvan Auriel.

Two brothers, also with previous convictions, received combined sentences of 54 years.

Eric J, 39, described in the trial as a "monster" and known to the traumatised children as "the fatty", was sentenced to 28 years and 40-year-old brother Jean-Marc received 26 years.

Eric J prostituted two of his children. The public prosecutor, referring to Greek mythology, described Eric as "Chronos, the Titan who devoured his own children".

An 18-year term was handed to Didier R, 29, found guilty of prostituting 31 children and of rape.

The events took place in a rundown council estate in the St Leonard district of Angers, and most of the accused were unemployed, unskilled or illiterate.

Most of the abuse was carried out in the apartment of Franck V and Patricia M, and in sheds on garden allotments.

The marathon trial - the biggest in French judicial history - saw 65 people in the dock, aged between 27 and 73, on charges of abusing 45 children, the youngest a 6-month-old baby and the eldest a 12-year-old.

More than 150 witnesses were called to testify in a specially-built court, and the evidence was so voluminous - 25,000 pages - that it had to be stored on CD.

One reason for this extraordinary attention to detail was the scandal surrounding a previous high-profile paedophile trial, which unfolded in Outreau, northern France, last year.

In that case, the accused spent months in custody awaiting trial, implicated on the testimony of a woman who later admitted she had been lying. Campaigners dubbed the fiasco a heavy blow to the effort to root out paedophilia, whose most fertile breeding ground is in small towns and the countryside.

There were originally 66 accused in the Angers trial, but charges against one defendant were deferred because of ill health. Three defendants were acquitted. The lightest penalty handed down was a six-month suspended term.

Defence lawyers said the mass trial was unfair, for it discouraged the jury from seeing the defendants as individuals. They also said that the couple at the centre had suffered sexual abuse as children themselves.

A defence lawyer, Patrick Descamps, argued the court had to take into account "the background to the affair, which is social deprivation, failures of the judicial and social services, pornography.

"Nearly all the accused were themselves abused when they were children. They had no trial."

Jacques Monier, one of four lawyers who represented the child victims, said he was "satisfied overall" with the result of the trial.

"The outcome was in line with our expectations because it took the children's testimony into account. It acknowledges their status as victims," he said.

About a dozen of the child victims, who are now aged between four and 18, were briefed by the judge about the sentencing in a closed-doors meeting. "They were very moved," Monier said.