Dented routes, marked by placements in homes and runaways, the daily life of hotel rooms in Goussainville (Val-d’Oise) or Sarcelles and Airbnbs rented for passes, customers who follow one another, ten a day on average, the classifieds and the grip of the boyfriend turned pimp… All this at 15 years old.
The criminal court of Val-d’Oise has been dealing with a new file of city pimping since Monday, March 27 in Pontoise. A case that has become emblematic by the action of the mother of the young complainant, Jennifer Pailhé. She managed to save her daughter from prostitution by taking an active part in the investigation to find her by providing the police with Assia’s new telephone numbers.
Both took their place on the bench of the civil parties for a trial that should last four days. Opposite, the former boyfriend, Brice P., 21 years old today, from Gonesse, is tried for aggravated pimping. The young man must also answer for violence against a person engaged in prostitution as well as rape of a minor over 15 years old and kidnapping. He totally disputes, at the opening of his trial, these last two facts of which he is accused, recognizes a slap.
She flees thanks to “Banana”, who takes pity on her bruises
The case goes back, on the judicial level, to the month of May 2020 when Jennifer Pailhé, presents herself at the police station in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). She explains that she went in search of her then 15-year-old daughter, who had run away since January from her foster family in Seine-et-Marne. Assia had contacted her mother to tell her that she wanted to stop prostitution.
The intervention of a certain “Banana”, who had come to seize the money for the passes, enabled him to flee. The man will take pity on the teenager when he discovers her cockerel and her bruises. He will offer her a hotel room, allowing her mother to pick her up.
The teenager confirms to prostitute herself on behalf of Brice met a year earlier in a home in Poissy (Yvelines) where she was also placed. She had struck up a romantic relationship with him at summer camp. On the subject of prostitution, she describes a single meal in the evening, pizzas and a “mac” which constantly monitors her, blocking her access to social networks.
A young girl under “grip and suggestion”
But on July 2, change of course: heard again, the young girl assures us that Brice is her boyfriend, not her pimp, that he does everything on the contrary to make her stop. Recently pregnant, she hopes to have this child and raise it with him. The investigation of the departmental security will however determine that she continues prostitution. The police establish connections with the Wannonce site, hotel reservations. They also manage to hear under X the famous “Banana” but also the client who preceded him and who had also noted the traces of violence.
In March 2021, the teenager is ready to say everything and recounts the violence, the forced sexual relations, her sequestration… “We can absolutely speak of influence and suggestion for this young girl who was waiting for great love”, has noted this Monday the psychologist who met her. The president of the criminal court remarks, however, that there are times when “she could have escaped” and that she “keeps coming back when she leaves”. “The hold is the psychic inability to separate from someone,” explains the psychologist who describes an “extremely frail” teenager who gives the feeling of being a baby bird that has fallen from the nest.
“You have to remember that they are both very young and very immature. She was 15, he was 18, ”said Brice P.’s lawyer, Me Sandrine Parise-Heideiger, who intends to plead acquittal for the charges of rape and forcible confinement. She also evokes an accused who squandered in a few months the 25,000 euros of inheritance from his grandmother, in particular with prostitutes and had no need to force his girlfriend, who was already engaged in this activity before meet.
“I expect from this trial a case law, an exemplary sentence”
“The grip is very present”, assures Jennifer Pailhé, on the sidelines of the hearing. “It doesn’t mean being physically constrained. They are runaway girls who no longer have family ties. Their executioner manages everything. He is the pillar. The grip is so strong that they don’t have the idea that they have a way out, ”says the mother whose goal today is to help other parents.
She has since created the association “Our Forgotten Teens” which follows nearly 200 young people, intends to “break the law of silence” and ensure “that shame changes sides”. “I expect from this trial a case law, an exemplary sentence,” she says. Maybe with a double-digit prison sentence, it will deter young people from prostituting their girlfriends. »
A few days ago, the Assize Court of Val-d’Oise pronounced up to 13 years of criminal imprisonment against three pimps also accused of gang rape, violence and kidnapping. “I also hope that this will encourage the government to take up the problem of child prostitution and prevention. Nothing is done. Do you see a change in the level of support for young people? “, she asks, also confiding the difficulties encountered today by her daughter. “She is not yet in the reconstruction. It will take time to learn to exist otherwise. »
