"We cannot close our eyes to teenage prostitution"

Image taken from the Forbidden Zone documentary entitled At 15 years old my daughter is prostituting herself.

-

• Sunday, at 9:05 pm, M6 broadcasts an issue of

  Zone interdite

  devoted to the prostitution of minors, entitled "At 15 years old my daughter is prostituted".

• The documentary was directed by Clarisse Verrier.

• "The title is from the perspective of mothers because we feel concerned," explains the journalist to

  20 Minutes

  .

  But it is not a matter of maternal gaze, it is more a question of respect, of alarm.

  This is to say that these girls are in great danger.

  "

The numbers are staggering.

According to a study by the Observatory of violence against women of Seine-Saint-Denis published in 2019, between 6,000 and 10,000 minors and minors are prostituted in France.

Most are said to be between 13 and 16 years old.

40,000 adult prostitutes are said to have started before the age of 18.

, broadcast Sunday at 9:05 pm on M6 will put faces (blurred) and above all, testimonies, on these statistics.

"We are talking about a great injustice, young people in great fragility and great violence," said journalist Clarisse Verrier to

.

The author of this documentary entitled "At 15, my daughter prostitutes herself", explains how this shoot was special.

What led you to tackle the subject of underage prostitution?

Often, one subject leads to another.

I shot a documentary on trans teens, also for

.

There were some for whom this was going badly.

Some went to the Refuge [an association taking in LGBT teenagers kicked out of their parents' homes].

While talking to them, I saw that the possibility of prostitution came easily.

I first said to myself that something had to be done about new forms of prostitution, then, looking into the subject, that the teenage angle was more specific.

We are talking about a great injustice, young people in great fragility and great violence.

The phenomenon is exponential.

There are new types of organization.

We cannot close our eyes to it, these are children who are broken by everything they experience.

Was it easy to approach these teenage girls and convince them to testify?

No.

It is the most time consuming film I have ever made.

There are some that I approached through their moms who sounded the alarm bell with an MP, others through an app, others through word of mouth, chatting.

I met people who, ultimately, no longer wanted to appear in the documentary, even blurred.

Those who testify were in the process of stopping prostitution - even if they did not stop.

It was a way of saying, “OK, I'm talking now because it's going to help me out.

They speak out because they need it, they know they are hurting themselves and they say they are doing it so that it does not happen to others.

Some agree to speak but afterwards they disappear from circulation.

I've been planted a dozen times.

I also waited a lot, we had to build a relationship of trust.

It was a shoot where we could not organize the sequences but in the end, we had to build the film.

The difficulty was to go to the picking: sometimes we go there and we come back with nothing.

Some teens asked if it was paid.

It was necessary to explain, to agree on a testimonial process, with nothing in return.

You bring up on the screen some of your private interactions with cookies.

Especially those of a mother who confides in you her distress because her daughter has once again run away ...

I hesitated but I thought it was representative of the way we approach these teens - I'll pass you the number changes, etc.

Regarding this mother, it was like our relationship which continued after the shooting.

We are there in a questioning on what it is to make a documentary like this one which is not dependent.

I wanted to focus on the testimony of the daughters and their mothers, framing this with words from experts on the subject - doctors, pediatricians, psychologists… The idea was to be as close as possible, to listen to the words of children.

The mother you are telling me about addressed me a lot in writing, it was her way of testifying.

It is indicative of his need to confide without speaking in front of a camera either.

Around her, no one is aware that her daughter is prostituting herself, apart from her son and her husband.

Text messages were part of this shoot, of this investigation.

There are a lot of things being said in writing, why not use that, even in a

 ?

It's a little weird, normally, it would be banned, but there, it had its place.

I am not betraying my interlocutor, she knows about it.

When I did it, it was because it was representative of the exchanges.

We get the impression, listening to you, that this investigation has permeated your daily life, that, even when you were not filming, the subject was with you ...

That's exactly it: it's a moment of life.

It's true that it permeates personal life.

I have three children.

The title is from the perspective of mothers because we feel concerned.

But it is not a matter of maternal gaze, it is more a question of respect, of alarm.

This is to say that these girls are in great danger.

We have a responsibility when we shoot.

That is to say ?

For example, the first time Amandine [one of the teenagers appearing in the report] decided to testify, it was because she needed to call for help.

I went to see her [in her town in the provinces].

I already knew his mom, whom I had first met.

Several weeks later, Amandine called me while she was on the run in Paris, she told me that she had no money to join friends at Gare Montparnasse.

There, I said to myself that I had to shoot.

I took it in my car.

I wondered if I was not accompanying this girl to do something terrible.

Her mother, who didn't know where she was, called her while we were on this trip.

I was very quickly in contact with the mother, I learned that she had known [that I had transported her daughter], so it was very good, I had not had to betray her.

But it distressed me, it raised the question of my responsibility.

We are really on the question of "what do we do?"

Because, of course, this is not their first runaway, nor their last, but we are here.

I learned later that one of the girls I filmed at Gare Montparnasse with Amandine was the daughter of another mother whom I was starting to follow.

But at the time, I didn't know.

But the fugue lasted six weeks.

We are completely in touch with the problem, we are with these girls who put themselves in danger and we ask ourselves the question of our responsibility.

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