Latest / The conspiracy / PREDATOR ISLAND__ Exposing Africa's Most DISTURBING Secret

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PREDATOR ISLAND__ Exposing Africa's Most DISTURBING Secret · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: We have to talk about Goret Island, a tiny eighty
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Speaker 1: eight acre spect off of Dakar, Senegal with a history
0:06
Speaker 1: that'll hit you like a brick. Allegedly, to this very day,
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Speaker 1: wealthy Europeans are traveling to engage in with children and
0:14
Speaker 1: openly paying for it. The island itself has a disturbing history,
0:19
Speaker 1: and this is a real world problem that is occurring
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Speaker 1: right now as I make this video that it seems
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Speaker 1: like nobody's doing a thing about. As always everybody, if
0:27
Speaker 1: you want to research this topic on your own, I'm
0:29
Speaker 1: posting a resources document in the description. All parties are
0:33
Speaker 1: presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
0:35
Speaker 1: I'm not planning on going anywhere or doing anything to myself.
0:38
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Speaker 1: visiting pdsdebt dot com slash conspiracy files today. And now
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Speaker 1: let's get back to our show. So we're traveling down
2:03
Speaker 1: a little bit of a rabbit hole here on the
2:05
Speaker 1: show and investigating some of these notorious islands across the
2:09
Speaker 1: world where terrible things in this case happening right in
2:12
Speaker 1: the direct sunlight, out in the open and when I
2:14
Speaker 1: first came across this story. I actually watched a documentary
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Speaker 1: on YouTube about it, and I just could not believe
2:20
Speaker 1: that this was actually happening and that no one is
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Speaker 1: doing anything about it. It's absolutely absurd. So today we
2:27
Speaker 1: have to talk about Gorret Island, which is off the
2:30
Speaker 1: coast of Senegal, and before we get into what's happening
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Speaker 1: with the children of the island, we have to talk
2:36
Speaker 1: about the history of the place. You see, back in
2:38
Speaker 1: fourteen forty four, Portuguese sailors led by Denise Diez landed
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Speaker 1: in Gorat, then called bur by the local Leabu and
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Speaker 1: renamed it Palma. The island to those sailors was a
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Speaker 1: killer spot as it guarded Dakar's harbor, and over the years,
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Speaker 1: the ownership of this specific small island changed hands many times,
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Speaker 1: with some referring to it as a hot potato. In fact,
3:00
Speaker 1: it changed hands seventeen different times before the year eighteen
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Speaker 1: fourteen between the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, with each
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Speaker 1: group of people building their own forts on the island
3:10
Speaker 1: like Nassau and de Streets to lock it down, and
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Speaker 1: those forts and merchant houses that were built on that
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Speaker 1: small island all traded goods, and they promoted business, but
3:19
Speaker 1: they also were in the business of trading people. By
3:22
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, Goret was a buzzing hub, its narrow
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Speaker 1: streets and colorful buildings now pulling in tourists and imagine
3:30
Speaker 1: that way back then tourists to the island. Back in
3:32
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, the locals in the area the Leabu
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Speaker 1: got sidelined as the Europeans took over the island, and
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Speaker 1: ever since the year nineteen seventy eight, UNESCO has been
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Speaker 1: managing the island, labeling it as a World Heritage Site.
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Speaker 1: But the island has some incredibly dark history. From fifteen
3:49
Speaker 1: thirty six to eighteen forty eight, Gorey was a grim
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Speaker 1: cog in the Atlantic slave trade, moving around two hundred
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Speaker 1: to four hundred slaves a year. Between sixteen seventy seven
3:59
Speaker 1: and eighteen fourteen, Africans, often grabbed by local intermediaries, were
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Speaker 1: sorted there on the island like cattle, by their age,
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Speaker 1: their sex, their health, and then chained in suffocating cells
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Speaker 1: branded with red hot irons and shoved through the door
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Speaker 1: of no return to ships that waited to take them
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Speaker 1: to their new destinations. Lots of those slaves who started
4:20
Speaker 1: their journey there on the island of Goret did not
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Speaker 1: make it across the ocean. They were stuffed into ships
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Speaker 1: like the Jesus of Lubec, where four hundred slaves were
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Speaker 1: jammed into a space meant for one hundred people, and
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Speaker 1: inside of those spaces they died from diseases or just
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Speaker 1: gave up on living altogether. Enslaved peoples also built Gorey's
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Speaker 1: infrastructure and worked as domestics for rich merchants. The historical
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Speaker 1: museum there on the island lays it all out and
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Speaker 1: doesn't shy away from European and African roles in that nightmare.
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Speaker 1: And now we have to focus briefly on the House
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Speaker 1: of Slaves located there on the island. The House of Slaves,
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Speaker 1: built most likely around the year seventeen seventy six by
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Speaker 1: Nicholas Peppin, is Gorey's most gut wrenching stop. It's now
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Speaker 1: a museum that will absolutely leave you speechless. Bubakar, Joseph
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Speaker 1: and da who ran the place until the year two
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Speaker 1: thousand and nine, claimed that millions had passed through its halls,
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Speaker 1: though historians figured that that number is actually a little
5:14
Speaker 1: bit lower. However, big names like Nelson Mandela and Barack
5:18
Speaker 1: Obama have walked those very halls and were shaken to
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Speaker 1: their core, and reportedly, Pope John Paul the Second was
5:24
Speaker 1: brought to tears inside of the House of Slaves in
5:26
Speaker 1: the year nineteen ninety two when he made a visit
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Speaker 1: The cramped cells inside of the House of Slaves, which
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Speaker 1: held up to two hundred chained slaves at a time,
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Speaker 1: and the door of no Return, screamed the trade's cruelty
5:37
Speaker 1: with displays of rusted shackles and branding tools throughout the museum.
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Speaker 1: The punishment cell, as it's known, was a suffocating closet
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Speaker 1: and was intended for anyone who fought back. Plenty died
5:47
Speaker 1: right there in that small room as they starved or
5:50
Speaker 1: gasped for air. Inside of that museum, you'll see a
5:53
Speaker 1: child's manacle small enough for a wrist, the size of
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Speaker 1: a coin, proof that even kids weren't spared from these atrocities. Disturbingly,
6:00
Speaker 1: records from the House of Slaves actually show that young girls,
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Speaker 1: some as young as ten years old, were kept in
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Speaker 1: a quote virgin room for traders who stopped by the fort.
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Speaker 1: To the walls inside of those slaves quarters were damp
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Speaker 1: and crusted with salt, and they still have scratch marks
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Speaker 1: from desperate prisoners. A haunting cry from the past. In
6:21
Speaker 1: the seventeen eighties, records talk about slaves being whipped with
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Speaker 1: leather straps till their backs were completely raw and covered
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Speaker 1: in blood, often in front of others to scare them
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Speaker 1: into line. And that door of no return that I
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Speaker 1: keep referencing wasn't just symbolic. Slaves too weak to board
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Speaker 1: the ships were forced out of that door and pushed
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Speaker 1: into the shark infested waters below in the ocean, left
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Speaker 1: to drown. Upstairs in the house of slaves, traders from
6:45
Speaker 1: European nations parted with fancy imported wines, while directly below
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Speaker 1: them slaves were and starved to death. The site's history
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Speaker 1: of child especially girls inside of that quote virgin room,
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Speaker 1: feels way too close to modern allegations that we're going
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Speaker 1: to discuss in a moment. It educates thousands, but it
7:03
Speaker 1: pushes us to act so that history doesn't continue to
7:05
Speaker 1: repeat itself. Life inside of that house of slaves was
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Speaker 1: a living hell or the enslaved. They were packed into
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Speaker 1: those cells with barely any room to breathe, and they
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Speaker 1: only got one meal a day, consisting of rotten millet
7:16
Speaker 1: or maize, food that was often crawling with bugs. As
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Speaker 1: eighteenth century logs described, diseases like dysentery spread fast throughout
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Speaker 1: the slave population at any time, and they were provided
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Speaker 1: with no ways to stay sanitary. Survivors from the House
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Speaker 1: of Slaves later told stories of floors slick with vomit
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Speaker 1: and layers of blood. Slaves were dragged outside daily to
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Speaker 1: be inspected by traders, poked and prodded like animals, their
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Speaker 1: teeth checked for value, and the women there faced constant
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Speaker 1: with some women forced to bear children who would immediately
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Speaker 1: be sold off. Punishments of the House of Slaves were
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Speaker 1: public and savage, designed to break people's spirits. These spectacles
7:55
Speaker 1: often watched by other slaves and traders, aimed to crush resistance,
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Speaker 1: and some sadistic traders would even place bets amongst each
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Speaker 1: other on who would scream first, who would suffer the
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Speaker 1: most painful punishment. It's a stark reminder of the dehumanization
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Speaker 1: that fueled the slave trade, and the reality that children
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Speaker 1: in the House of slaves faced is hard to stomach.
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Speaker 1: Museum records show Some children just four or five years
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Speaker 1: old were chained in cells, with adults, often orphaned and
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Speaker 1: left completely alone after their parents died on route. Many
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Speaker 1: children were separated from their mothers during the process of sorting,
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Speaker 1: and while slaves suffered below, the House of Slaves upper
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Speaker 1: floors were a completely different world. The traders who were
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Speaker 1: visiting lived in plush rooms with imported furniture, sipping expensive
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Speaker 1: French wine and eating off of silver platters. The museum's
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Speaker 1: upper rooms, now completely bare, still have ornate ceiling beams,
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Speaker 1: addaring contrast to the absolute dungeon below. Interestingly, though, not
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Speaker 1: everybody out there buys Goya's rep as a slave trade giant,
8:56
Speaker 1: and it sparked some pretty heated arguments between scholars and historians. Bubakar,
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Speaker 1: Joseph and Dae swore that millions had passed through the
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Speaker 1: House of Slaves halls, but historians like Philip D. Curtin
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Speaker 1: and Ibrahim Athios say it was more like two hundred
9:10
Speaker 1: to three hundred slaves a year, And in addition, there's
9:12
Speaker 1: barely any archaeological proof, just a handful of shackles. But
9:16
Speaker 1: Goret's emotional pull and the stories that emerge from the
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Speaker 1: place are absolutely massive and damning. Its nineteen seventy eight
9:23
Speaker 1: UNESCO designation made it a global symbol, with eighties and
9:26
Speaker 1: nineties fixes keeping the place intact. When slavery was ended
9:30
Speaker 1: around the year eighteen forty eight, Goray faded as nearby
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Speaker 1: Dakar's Port took over, and by eighteen seventy two Goray
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Speaker 1: was a French commune and even sent their own representatives
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Speaker 1: to France's parliament to ensure that they were represented. Now
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Speaker 1: it's fifteen hundred residents bank on tourism, with museums and
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Speaker 1: festivals bringing in the cash for locals. The bougain Villia
9:50
Speaker 1: line streets and pastel houses are instagram gold and travelers
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Speaker 1: do travel to Gore Island all the time to take photos, visit,
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Speaker 1: see the museums. But the island his economic struggles opened
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Speaker 1: the door to some incredibly dark and disturbing modern problems
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Speaker 1: that echo the past. So now at this point we
10:07
Speaker 1: have to jump to the late nineteen nineties, when the
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Speaker 1: island of Gorat was rocked with some ugly disturbing news.
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Speaker 1: It was alleged suddenly that rich European tourists had been
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Speaker 1: accused of kids on the island visiting the island and
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Speaker 1: paying to have children, a sick twist on the island's
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Speaker 1: history of pain. At the time, tourism to Gorat was booming,
10:28
Speaker 1: but local poverty at the time made it incredibly easy
10:31
Speaker 1: for creeps and to move in. Folks at the time
10:34
Speaker 1: were too scared, though, to speak up, and were deeply
10:36
Speaker 1: worried about losing money from tourism. On October twenty second,
10:40
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, liberation journalist John Gortaide dropped a bombshell.
10:44
Speaker 1: In the article he wrote, he called out white residents
10:47
Speaker 1: and tourists for kids directly near the house of slaves,
10:51
Speaker 1: and quoted locals who said, quote, the people of the
10:53
Speaker 1: island have been cowed into silence by foreign money. John,
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Speaker 1: who visited the island in September of ninety seven, found
11:00
Speaker 1: a community that was pissed but stuck, scared of complete
11:04
Speaker 1: economic fallout. These people had been backed into a corner.
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Speaker 1: There wasn't enough money to go around on the island.
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Speaker 1: And when these rich men from other countries came in
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Speaker 1: with flowing stacks of cash, ready to help fund the
11:16
Speaker 1: town and the island itself, but they only demanded one thing. Children.
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Speaker 1: According to them, the only thing that they could do
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Speaker 1: was accept the offer. The article that John eventually ended
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Speaker 1: up writing and submitting to the Liberation Journal, which was
11:28
Speaker 1: published in nineteen ninety seven, compared the island's modern history
11:32
Speaker 1: to the slave trade and lit an absolute fire under
11:35
Speaker 1: the issue. It sparked an entire local investigation and a
11:39
Speaker 1: protection group was formed. Showing how serious the issue was,
11:42
Speaker 1: one resident told him for the article, quote we know
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Speaker 1: these men, but we need their money to eat end quote.
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Speaker 1: Kids as young as ten years old were being recruited
11:51
Speaker 1: into this disturbing activity. Some parents on the island who
11:54
Speaker 1: had incredibly young kids, who unfortunately were broke at the time,
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Speaker 1: even took small gifts from the US Europeans like rice
12:01
Speaker 1: or cash, and turned a blind eye to these men
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Speaker 1: their children. John called it a quote culture of complicity
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Speaker 1: end quote. I mean, this island was really surviving on tourism,
12:11
Speaker 1: those one hundred and fifty thousand or so tourists that
12:13
Speaker 1: came here every year. So they obviously didn't want to
12:16
Speaker 1: be known as the island where crime goes completely unpunished,
12:20
Speaker 1: a place full of absolute sickos, and they wanted to
12:23
Speaker 1: continue to get those tourism dollars. The article that Jean
12:26
Speaker 1: wrote and published in the Liberation magazine, the impact of
12:29
Speaker 1: it was huge. He wrote about a French tourist in
12:32
Speaker 1: August of nineteen ninety seven who visited Gorret Island and
12:35
Speaker 1: offered a handful of cash to a twelve year old
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Speaker 1: boy near the historical museum out in broad daylight. Absolutely
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Speaker 1: bold as hell. Then there was quote Monsieur Pierre, a
12:45
Speaker 1: Belgian resident who locals on Goret Island said visited frequently
12:49
Speaker 1: and liked to lure boys back to his place with
12:51
Speaker 1: fake promises of sending them to school in Europe, only
12:55
Speaker 1: to then proceed to them in his Gorret villa. To
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Speaker 1: One family on the island confronted a German who had
13:01
Speaker 1: come specifically to visit the children. But after they confronted them,
13:04
Speaker 1: this German Man paid the family off with five hundred
13:08
Speaker 1: thousand cfa francs about one thousand, five hundred US dollars
13:12
Speaker 1: to keep quiet about the entire thing, move on and
13:15
Speaker 1: not report it to authorities. I mean, just think about that, guys.
13:18
Speaker 1: You have openly lots of people on the island knowing
13:22
Speaker 1: that these rich European men were coming there and writing
13:26
Speaker 1: their children and absolutely nothing was being done about it.
13:29
Speaker 1: Jean in his article went big and said that this
13:32
Speaker 1: mess was a slap in the face to Goret's legacy,
13:35
Speaker 1: writing quote where slaves once suffered children now face a
13:39
Speaker 1: new form of bondage end quote. And in his article
13:42
Speaker 1: he pointed out the lack of cops on the island.
13:44
Speaker 1: In fact, there was only one police officer who patrolled
13:47
Speaker 1: the entire island in the year nineteen ninety seven. John
13:51
Speaker 1: and the author of the article pushed for UNESCO to
13:53
Speaker 1: jump in and argued that the island's sanctity was on
13:56
Speaker 1: the line. The article also hit on the kids's trauma,
13:59
Speaker 1: as they had been now left on the island, stuck
14:01
Speaker 1: with intense shame and no way to escape or get help.
14:05
Speaker 1: Jean's article, in his work to expose all of this,
14:07
Speaker 1: put Gore's dark side on the world stage and expose
14:11
Speaker 1: the world to these horrific crimes that were occurring there.
14:13
Speaker 1: And that was all before the nineteen ninety eight documentary.
14:17
Speaker 1: Just a year later, the nineteen ninety eight documentary Paradise
14:20
Speaker 1: for cranked up the heat and increased the pressure. In
14:23
Speaker 1: the documentary, sixteen year old Ali spilled his guts saying, quote,
14:28
Speaker 1: they tell you you'll be a star, but it's lies.
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Speaker 1: End quote about being targeted by pos on the island
14:34
Speaker 1: since he was ten years old, with offers of cash
14:36
Speaker 1: and travels. The raw power from that documentary came from
14:40
Speaker 1: the children, like Ali, who said on camera that a
14:43
Speaker 1: French tourist in July of nineteen ninety seven offered him
14:46
Speaker 1: fifty thousand cfa francs or about one hundred and fifty
14:50
Speaker 1: US dollars for directly near the house of slaves.
14:54
Speaker 2: One day, I met a man who asked me to
14:56
Speaker 2: go to his place. He put money on the bed
15:00
Speaker 2: me to do things with him. I refused, and then
15:03
Speaker 2: I went and warned the police about him. I wasn't
15:06
Speaker 2: sure if I should report him as a homosexual or something,
15:09
Speaker 2: but then I saw him on the beach with a
15:10
Speaker 2: little boy and he was flirting with us too, And
15:13
Speaker 2: after that he was sent away from There are a.
15:17
Speaker 3: Lot of people who point the finger at you.
15:19
Speaker 2: If you speak out, the homosexual will go and talk
15:21
Speaker 2: to the police.
15:23
Speaker 3: It's you that's going to get caught. He's got more
15:25
Speaker 3: means than.
15:26
Speaker 2: You because he's richer. As far as I'm concerned, there's
15:29
Speaker 2: no law in Senegal.
15:30
Speaker 1: In addition, Ali, who was filmed in Gorret's market, shared
15:34
Speaker 1: a story about how a German Man had dangled a
15:37
Speaker 1: record deal right in front of his face, saying, you know,
15:40
Speaker 1: after all this is done, I'll be able to get
15:42
Speaker 1: you a record deal. You can sing and perform, make
15:44
Speaker 1: tons of money. We'll make you a star. But when
15:47
Speaker 1: he went with the man to his rented villa to assumingly,
15:50
Speaker 1: you know, begin the process of signing this record deal,
15:52
Speaker 1: he was keep in mind he was only about thirteen
15:55
Speaker 1: years old at the time. In the film, Ali confessed, quote,
15:58
Speaker 1: I feel dirty, but I need the money end quote.
16:01
Speaker 1: While he said this, his young voice was cracking. These
16:04
Speaker 1: stories directly from Gory's youth gave the kids a voice
16:07
Speaker 1: of their own. Mariette de duf, a fierce Goret mom,
16:11
Speaker 1: lit up the screen in the film, saying, really.
16:14
Speaker 2: We should arrest them, but we don't. Whether it's the
16:18
Speaker 2: police or the AmAm, nobody says anything. Marietta only wanted
16:23
Speaker 2: to be filmed in her house. She didn't want anybody
16:25
Speaker 2: to know she'd spoken to us. That would cause her problems.
16:28
Speaker 2: What does she think about else.
16:29
Speaker 3: On the island? They're bad people, really we.
16:35
Speaker 2: Should kill them, and why is everybody silent about it?
16:41
Speaker 2: They don't say anything because of money. If you give
16:44
Speaker 2: out money, you can do.
16:45
Speaker 3: What you want.
16:45
Speaker 1: Here in the film, she talks about how she has
16:49
Speaker 1: seen European guys with boys at night by the Faery
16:52
Speaker 1: doc a go to spot in ninety seven to ninety eight,
16:55
Speaker 1: and since there were no counseling facilities on Goret all
16:58
Speaker 1: these children were being left to deal with this extreme
17:01
Speaker 1: trauma completely on their own. The director of the film,
17:04
Speaker 1: Marion Mayer Hondahl, attended some community meetings in March of
17:08
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight where folks actually openly discussed ratting out
17:12
Speaker 1: the offenders, but were scared of tanking tourism. This footage
17:15
Speaker 1: showed a community that was stuck between what's morally right
17:18
Speaker 1: and their own survival, and the documentary itself didn't hold
17:21
Speaker 1: back on any specifics. It talked about a Canadian man
17:24
Speaker 1: who was arrested in September of ninety seven who got
17:28
Speaker 1: off with a one million CFA FRONC fine roughly three
17:31
Speaker 1: thousand dollars USD for multiple boys on the island. Can
17:36
Speaker 1: you imagine that offer for someone who is a wealthy
17:39
Speaker 1: You can come to this island. You can multiple boys.
17:42
Speaker 1: Even if you get arrested, you just pay him three
17:44
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. You're out of prison. Go back and do
17:46
Speaker 1: it again.
17:47
Speaker 2: Trying to meet a place to face, we knocked at
17:50
Speaker 2: this store, filming with a hidden camera.
17:53
Speaker 3: A German Man lives here for years.
17:55
Speaker 2: He's reputedly been living with a Senegalese boy who's now
17:58
Speaker 2: an adult.
17:58
Speaker 3: But we were told we'd just him and that he
18:01
Speaker 3: wouldn't be back in Goret for three months.
18:03
Speaker 2: This Institute for Democracy and Cultural Development in Africa is
18:06
Speaker 2: run by a South African who is said to have
18:08
Speaker 2: lived with several of the boys. We try to meet
18:11
Speaker 2: up with him again, without success, although his secretary told
18:14
Speaker 2: us he was at home. Gorret is small and a
18:17
Speaker 2: camera is immediately noticed. This man is supposed to have
18:24
Speaker 2: had seas with several manners. I'm not interested. He tells
18:27
Speaker 2: us they should round up all the peoples in Europe.
18:30
Speaker 2: First girls feel safe here. It's hard to prove their guilt.
18:34
Speaker 2: They must be reported to the police or to be
18:36
Speaker 2: caught in flegrante.
18:38
Speaker 1: There was another guy on the island too, named Francois
18:41
Speaker 1: le Fort, a Frenchman who lured children back to his
18:44
Speaker 1: place with fake promised trips to France. Francois ended up
18:49
Speaker 1: multiple children on the island and he ended up in
18:52
Speaker 1: court in April of nineteen ninety eight after he tried
18:54
Speaker 1: to bribe officials with two million cfa francs about six
18:59
Speaker 1: thousand US do, a bribe that was turned down. However,
19:02
Speaker 1: nothing happened to Francois. He never served any prison time.
19:06
Speaker 1: He got away with victimizing those kids. Cops needed to
19:09
Speaker 1: catch guys quote in the act end quote in order
19:12
Speaker 1: to really arrest them and charge them, which ended up
19:14
Speaker 1: letting most of these offenders and their crimes slide. So remember,
19:18
Speaker 1: Francois tried to bribe locals to not you know, pursue
19:22
Speaker 1: these charges against them and everything, but they rejected the
19:25
Speaker 1: bribe and continued with their attempt to bring some justice here.
19:28
Speaker 1: But the fallout from this entire affair hit the island hard.
19:31
Speaker 1: The falla Row Foundation cut funding to a local street
19:34
Speaker 1: children's home, which hurt other vulnerable kids on the island.
19:37
Speaker 1: That all shows how complicated this entire thing was and
19:40
Speaker 1: the emotional and economic toll on the youth of Gorret Island.
19:44
Speaker 1: Psychologists Seringame Moore Mbaye lays bare the psychological wreckage left
19:49
Speaker 1: on Gorret's child victims. Mbaye, filmed in his dedcar office
19:53
Speaker 1: in March of nineteen ninety eight, says in the film
19:55
Speaker 1: that the children's recently developed aggression towards adults signaled a
19:59
Speaker 1: broken truck, just calling it a quote threat to society
20:02
Speaker 1: end quote.
20:03
Speaker 2: When people are in shock, they can't talk, they feel
20:06
Speaker 2: ashamed and guilty. Great is a landmark of our country.
20:09
Speaker 2: But everyone knows about the peoples, and I believe they're
20:12
Speaker 2: going to fight back. But the perversity with which the
20:15
Speaker 2: peoples are buying people off and establishing networks leads to
20:18
Speaker 2: enormous feelings of guilt.
20:20
Speaker 3: People have told me they never would believe so and
20:22
Speaker 3: so could have been a child.
20:24
Speaker 2: The extreme poverty of the population allows them to be
20:27
Speaker 2: compromised quite easily and become accomplices. The perversity of peoples
20:32
Speaker 2: is that they go so far as to buy people
20:34
Speaker 2: by their silence. Because these people here are in an
20:37
Speaker 2: extremely precarious economic situation, so they cannot talk.
20:41
Speaker 3: You must understand that.
20:43
Speaker 2: And other aspect is that Senegalese law isn't sufficient a
20:46
Speaker 2: Canadian people was recently condemned and admitted guilt, who has
20:49
Speaker 2: fined a million cfa francs. Those kids feel shame about
20:53
Speaker 2: their bodies. They're suspicious of their teachers.
20:56
Speaker 3: Some of them have nightmares. Some of them even want
20:59
Speaker 3: to go back to the street. They have a feeling
21:01
Speaker 3: of aggressiveness towards adults. That's why I say this is
21:04
Speaker 3: a threat to society.
21:06
Speaker 1: One boy who wasn't named in the film allegedly told
21:08
Speaker 1: him by a that he felt quote dirty after an encounter.
21:12
Speaker 1: Unable to even look at his own family, and with
21:14
Speaker 1: no psychological mental counseling on Goret, those kids were left
21:18
Speaker 1: to drown in their own trauma, with their pain ignored
21:21
Speaker 1: as the island chased tourist dollars. The documentary itself back
21:25
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, demanded action to heal those wounds
21:29
Speaker 1: and stop these predators from exploiting the youth of Gorret Island.
21:32
Speaker 1: Mariette Duffe, a resident, raged that predators were bad people
21:37
Speaker 1: who should have faced death, but admitted on camera that
21:40
Speaker 1: money kept the people of the island's mouth shut. Tiorro Guie,
21:44
Speaker 1: a twenty six year old restaurant owner who was discussed
21:46
Speaker 1: in the film, claimed that he saw a man surrounded
21:49
Speaker 1: by children on the island, obviously not his own children,
21:52
Speaker 1: and Tiorro even stated that he suspected this man was
21:56
Speaker 1: who had come here to purchase time with those children
21:59
Speaker 1: to the But in the documentary, it stated that Tierro
22:02
Speaker 1: himself stayed quiet in order to protect the tourism on
22:05
Speaker 1: the island and bay A. The psychologist says this silence
22:09
Speaker 1: betrayed the children of the island and allowed those predators
22:12
Speaker 1: to thrive and operate unimpeded. The documentary called out this
22:16
Speaker 1: moral failure and urged Goret to put its children first.
22:20
Speaker 1: In the documentary, another local stated quote, they don't say
22:23
Speaker 1: anything because of money. If you give out money, you
22:26
Speaker 1: can do what you want here end quote, and those
22:29
Speaker 1: words shared in April of nineteen ninety eight cut deep.
22:32
Speaker 1: I mean, the film is absolutely crazy. You can see
22:35
Speaker 1: the people in the community in the film debating with
22:38
Speaker 1: each other whether or not they should report these and interestingly,
22:42
Speaker 1: the documentary also revealed how powerful from Europe used sick
22:47
Speaker 1: tricks to ensnare the children of Gorat and often portrayed
22:51
Speaker 1: themselves as heroes. So you remember Francois Left, the man
22:55
Speaker 1: who attempted to bribe victims and locals so that they
22:59
Speaker 1: wouldn't turn him in For those kids. The man who
23:01
Speaker 1: was reported to be a serial well, he claimed in
23:06
Speaker 1: public that he was an anti crusader while he was
23:10
Speaker 1: at the same time in the Shadows Children, a ruse
23:13
Speaker 1: that Musa So, a kid's home director, helped to expose
23:17
Speaker 1: in the year in nineteen ninety eight.
23:19
Speaker 2: He introduced himself to me as a crusader against Pea.
23:22
Speaker 2: I quickly found out that he was worse than the
23:24
Speaker 2: people he said he was fighting against. That was just
23:26
Speaker 2: a pretext because in reality, he himself was doing our kids,
23:30
Speaker 2: and there's plenty of proofs before asked me if i'd had.
23:33
Speaker 3: Said with the book before. I said no. He asked
23:36
Speaker 3: me if I wanted to have with him. I said no.
23:39
Speaker 2: Said if you do it with me, then I'll take
23:41
Speaker 2: you to France. So I said yes. So we went
23:43
Speaker 2: to his room. It was about ten o'clock in the morning.
23:46
Speaker 2: We made love. Afterwards he gave me two and a
23:48
Speaker 2: half thousand CFAs. The second time was that day, at
23:51
Speaker 2: about five o'clock in the afternoon, he passed by the
23:53
Speaker 2: home and he gave me a signal to follow him.
23:55
Speaker 2: We went to the room and we did it again.
23:58
Speaker 2: Then he gave me four thousand CFAs he said he
24:01
Speaker 2: wanted to sleep with me. I asked why. He said nothing,
24:05
Speaker 2: I just want you to do to me what we
24:06
Speaker 2: saw on the film. Then I got angry with him,
24:09
Speaker 2: and I was angry for a while, so he said, Okay,
24:12
Speaker 2: I won't ask you again, but don't tell Musa. He
24:14
Speaker 2: said if I did tell, he'd get into trouble and
24:17
Speaker 2: the money transfers to.
24:18
Speaker 3: The refuge would be stopped. Then my friends would be
24:21
Speaker 3: back on the streets.
24:23
Speaker 1: And those men who visited the island, they acted like
24:25
Speaker 1: white knights, claiming that they were doing something great for
24:28
Speaker 1: the island, feeding the local children, offering them meals, bringing
24:32
Speaker 1: these kids clothing, and giving them cash that they could
24:34
Speaker 1: live a better life. I mean, it's absolutely insane how
24:39
Speaker 1: this island was being run. I mean, this was just
24:41
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen nineties, guys. This was like a
24:45
Speaker 1: very open thing that was happening here, to the point
24:47
Speaker 1: where a film crew was able to get access to
24:50
Speaker 1: all these people and just get them to admit to
24:52
Speaker 1: this stuff right out in the open. You know, you'd
24:55
Speaker 1: like to think that after that documentary was released and
24:58
Speaker 1: all this came out about what was happening there, that
25:01
Speaker 1: something major was changed, laws would be upgraded, there would
25:04
Speaker 1: be some major arrests and imprisonments, but that, to my knowledge,
25:09
Speaker 1: never really happened. Even in the Senegalese law, if they
25:12
Speaker 1: caught a person, you know, a child, they could be
25:15
Speaker 1: sentenced to up to ten years in prison, which I
25:18
Speaker 1: think should obviously be way longer than that. But like
25:21
Speaker 1: I said before, there was a caveat that they actually
25:24
Speaker 1: had to catch the predator in the act of the child.
25:27
Speaker 1: They couldn't go off of allegations or stories. So this
25:30
Speaker 1: made it nearly impossible for them to ever actually prosecute
25:35
Speaker 1: and imprison these predators based on their own laws. And
25:39
Speaker 1: you fast forward all the way to today twenty twenty five,
25:42
Speaker 1: data and information about Gore specifically is incredibly thin and
25:47
Speaker 1: almost non existent, but Senegal is still a red flag
25:50
Speaker 1: for tourism. Per the twenty twenty US Department of State report,
25:55
Speaker 1: Ore's slave trade passed etched in the House of Slaves's
25:59
Speaker 1: grim cells is allowed call to protect its children today.
26:02
Speaker 1: The nineteen ninety seven Liberation article written by Jean and
26:06
Speaker 1: the paradise for documentary gave us Ali, Marie tu Duf
26:11
Speaker 1: and Surig name Morton Baie screaming for justice. However, it's
26:15
Speaker 1: really unknown to this day if justice was ever really served. Senegal,
26:19
Speaker 1: as it turns out, needs tougher cops, real counseling for children,
26:23
Speaker 1: more authorities in general on the island of Goret, and
26:26
Speaker 1: more digging to keep Goret clean. And these sick out.
26:30
Speaker 1: And that's where the story ends, y'all. There aren't these
26:33
Speaker 1: big convictions, There aren't these big resolutions in this story.
26:37
Speaker 1: There isn't really much at all other than this documentary
26:41
Speaker 1: and this article. And a lot of people tried to
26:44
Speaker 1: deny that this was happening at the time. They called
26:46
Speaker 1: the author a little bit crazy, the documentary people crazy.
26:49
Speaker 1: But once that stuff came out, it was hard to
26:52
Speaker 1: ignore and shut down the conversations. When you had people
26:55
Speaker 1: on camera admitting that they were seeing these men on
26:58
Speaker 1: the island with these kids. They were watching these men
27:01
Speaker 1: hand children cash in exchange for favors. You had victims
27:05
Speaker 1: that were, you know, eight, ten, thirteen years old coming
27:08
Speaker 1: out and talking about what had happened to them. But
27:11
Speaker 1: I still don't know how many people were ever convicted
27:14
Speaker 1: for this. I don't even know if they ever stopped
27:16
Speaker 1: this on the island. There are no like big reports
27:19
Speaker 1: or expose a's talking about this. I couldn't find any
27:22
Speaker 1: major report, you know, from the government cracking down on
27:25
Speaker 1: all this or changing laws or even making like a
27:28
Speaker 1: big statement saying we're going to enforce this now and
27:30
Speaker 1: this is no longer welcome here. So who knows? There
27:33
Speaker 1: could be these rich European men still there on the
27:36
Speaker 1: island today, going there for those same purposes to enslave children.
27:42
Speaker 1: And with an island that already came with such a
27:44
Speaker 1: dark and disturbing past, you'd think that they would want
27:47
Speaker 1: to stop that sooner. It's pretty disturbing stuff. But this
27:51
Speaker 1: has been our second Island episode, and I'm trying to,
27:54
Speaker 1: you know, raise the alarm that these things are happening,
27:56
Speaker 1: because no one's talking about them. It's crazy. Let me
27:58
Speaker 1: know your thoughts in the comments section below. Also, if
28:02
Speaker 1: you're listening to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or
28:05
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, please leave me a five
28:08
Speaker 1: star review on there. Thank you all for tuning in.
28:11
Speaker 1: This has been a really depressing one. I really appreciate
28:13
Speaker 1: though everybody who shows up every week to watch these videos,
28:16
Speaker 1: you guys are making my whole journey and my life
28:19
Speaker 1: worth it, and I can't thank you all enough. Keep
28:21
Speaker 1: that tinfoil hat on, always stay suspicious, and I'll see
28:25
Speaker 1: y'all next week,