Child grooming, child sexual exploitation and child rape cannot be solely blamed on immigrants. France has 9M immigrants, of 69M population. 100k+ are Pakistani. 5-6M Muslims live in France. However, it is not the immigrants who are the predators in France. The 2023 report of The Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (CIIVISE) in France provides great detail. According to Civiise, a child is sexually abused every three minutes in France. The scale of the crisis is staggering, yet it has never been treated as the national emergency that it is. Police, judges and even physicians are afraid to speak out. Precisely as in the UK. The commission's findings showed that 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence every year in France, and 5,400,000 adults have suffered such abuse in childhood ▪ 10% of the French population has been a victim of incest. ▪ 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence annually, equivalent to 3 per school class. ▪ 75% confide in their mother, 19% in siblings, and 15% in their father. ▪ In only 1% of cases is there evidence or a witness; in the remaining 99%, it is the child’s word against the adult’s. ▪ 79% of healthcare professionals fail to link psychological trauma with sexual violence. ▪ Only 5% of reports are made by physicians, largely due to fear of disciplinary sanctions from the Medical Council. ▪ 83% of raped children are girls. In 67% of cases, incest results in pregnancy, with two-thirds ending in abortion. ▪ Children with disabilities are significantly more vulnerable, given regular physical handling for care routines, making it harder to distinguish abusive contact. Last year, France witnessed the trial in one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in its modern history. Joël Le Scouarnec, a former surgeon, admitted to sexually abusing children for decades, with about 300 victims. In French, the very etymology of the word for child is revealing: the term enfant derives from the Latin infans, literally meaning “one who does not speak”. Yet children have always spoken about the violence inflicted upon them. What has too often been lacking is not their voice, but society’s willingness to listen. Childhood remains socially defined by a lack of power and agency, and it is time for that to change.
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