February 11, 2026, the front page of the newspaper Libération, a litany of horrors. “Pierre Robert led, between at least 2015 and 2025, a group of ‘sex trainers,’ all HIV-positive, tasked with ‘training’ street children, children from very poor families, and talibés (Quranic students) in sex, before handing them over to ‘clients.’ During his stays in Senegal, ‘the boss’ organized parties in a villa in Saly where the ‘menu’ consisted of disadvantaged children lured by the ‘sex trainers,’ then filmed and abused by his guests (…).” The revolting account continues for several lines, notably describing dozens of underage boys taken from the street, held captive, and used as sex objects by a highly organized network of adult men.

These shocking revelations concern practices of unprecedented scale and ramification, but which are neither isolated nor new. They thrive on the bedrock of a social tragedy that unfolds daily before our eyes and that we refuse to see.

Figures put forward by human rights organizations (a low estimate according to several specialists) range from 30,000 to 100,000 children left to fend for themselves on the streets of Dakar. Talibé children make up the vast majority of them.

Alongside the recurring beatings of these children and the acts of torture they suffer, sometimes resulting in death, at the hands of usurpers of the title of teacher of faith who exploit them by sending them to beg, there are catastrophes, also avoidable, such as the fire at a daara in the Medina which killed nine talibés in March 2013.

There is also, to return to this sordid news, a multitude of sexual predators at large, searching for easy prey such as the talibés. In September 2015, for example, the newspaper L'Observateur denounced, with detailed accounts and supporting testimonies, "the scandal of talibé children used as sexual objects by delinquents."

It included the story of an eight-year-old talibé spending his nights in car wrecks at the mercy of a deranged man who had come to abuse him, that of another of the same age on whom drug addicts had taken turns, another who had run away because his master was beating him savagely only to find himself in the clutches of a predator, without all this causing a scandal for many people.

Before and after L'Obs's investigation, other media outlets reported similar cases. In July 2015, a French national was accused of sexually abusing a talibé (a student in a Quranic school). In February 2011 and July 2015, Quranic teachers were arrested for having, for a long time, subjected the children entrusted to their care to the same treatment. In September 2015, an individual came across a runaway talibé and offered to take him back to his parents. Once inside the first unfinished building he found, he raped him. In January 2016, another pedophile kidnapped and raped four children. To convince them to go with him, he simply promised them food. The list is far from exhaustive.

What can be said of a society that throws its children into an open-air hell? Children whose cries die in indifference. In the heart of the darkness of silent distress, children disappear without anyone noticing. They have neither father nor mother, neither name nor face.

One can only observe the weakness of a state that, for decades, has refused to enforce its own laws prohibiting child begging, and the sickness of a society that remains unmoved. Who among those who allow this situation to persist—citizens who accept it and state representatives who abdicate their responsibilities—would leave their own children at the mercy of the pedophiles, torturers, and murderers who prey upon them?

Through a kind of endemic schizophrenia, some give alms to the talibés (students of Quranic schools) seeking divine recognition for a good deed or following the advice of a marabout (religious leader) in the pursuit of material gain. This society, like the plot woven by Aminata Sow Fall in *La grève des Battu* (The Strike of the Beaten), seems to need the presence of beggars in general and talibé children in particular. For every hand that gives, there must be a hand that receives. Vulnerable people, including children, are needed to whom offerings laden with covetousness and sin are made in the hope of absolution and divine retribution. This ensures the perpetuation of this ongoing social tragedy.

It is clear that no public action can fully illuminate the future by turning away from this priority or by feigning interest only when, from time to time, a foreign organization invites it to do so. A well-known saying goes that a father who lets his children die of hunger and cold cannot be worthy of showing anyone the way of life. Politics is the imperative necessity of standing alongside the most vulnerable. Public action must be an effective means of fighting injustice. The most serious injustice is that done to children.

A society that is unaware of this is profoundly, irrevocably sick. Its streets have become places of deprivation of liberty and love, where newborn children are condemned to mere survival before they have even taken a step toward a glimmer of hope. The abdication of responsibility has replaced selflessness in favor of the most vulnerable, and greed tramples innocence. Infanticide is born of the union of denial and cynicism.

The child cries out, and the adults, as if his screams were pleasant sounds, dance. The gentle childhood behind closed doors is the driving force of a clear conscience in the face of the unbearable childhood that has taken up residence outside.

Children's eyes, on a daily basis, accuse adults, telling them: you were supposed to educate, you abandoned them. You were supposed to feed them, you starved them. You were supposed to heal them, you hurt them. You were supposed to protect them, you killed them.