# Sébastien Faure

Sébastien Faure (6 January 1858 – 14 July 1942) was a French anarchist, convicted sex offender, freethought and secularist activist and a principal proponent of synthesis anarchism.
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## Biography

Before becoming a free-thinker, Faure was a seminarist. He engaged in politics as a socialist before turning to anarchism in 1888.
In 1894, he was prosecuted in "The Trial of the thirty" ("Procès des trente"), but was acquitted. That same year, he became the guardian of Sidonie Vaillant after the execution of her father, Auguste Vaillant. In 1895, he cofounded "Le Libertaire" with Louise Michel, taking the name of the earlier journal by Joseph Déjacque. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, he was one of the leading supporters of Alfred Dreyfus. In 1904, he created a libertarian school, La Ruche ("The Hive"), close to Rambouillet, which closed in February 1917. In 1916, he launched the periodical "Ce qu'il faut dire". Faure also co-founded (with Volin) the Synthesis, or also known as synthesis anarchism which was an influential form of conceiving anarchist federations.

### Pedophilia

On 23 September 1917 Faure was caught sexually assaulting young girls in a Parisian flea market. Accused by multiple witnesses in the crowd, he evaded the police and was sentenced to two years of prison time for public indecency. Discovered and arrested in Marseille in January 1918, his sentenced was reduced to six months following a retrial. Though he would claim to have been falsely persecuted, he was viewed with suspicion in anarchist circles and avoided political activity until December 1919. However, on 15 March 1921 he was again arrested along with two accomplices, accused of sexually abusing two girls aged 11 and 12. Through the investigation it was revealed that he was known to local children as "Monsieur Fontaine", and had abused five more victims. He was again convicted of public indecency and sentenced to eight months in prison. He again claimed to have been falsely accused and was able to convince his contemporaries, and subsequent analyses of his life tended to dismiss the charges. The case files for his 1917 conviction were not released to the public until 2018, which led to a comprehensive compilation of documents and testimonies published in 2021. This evidence disproved allegations of police manipulation and also revealed previously unknown earlier cases. On 9 September 1903 he was caught molesting three young girls, but released as the parents did not press charges. On 19 November 1907 he was identified as the client of a 14-year old prostitute, but no action was taken. He was again caught on 28 September 1916 while molesting two young girls, but the police commissioner opted to use the case as blackmail to curb his pacifist activism amidst the First World War. It is also likely that he used his school La Ruche for his sexual predation, where he had taken in 20 to 30 orphaned children throughout its 13 years of operation. During the 1917 case the anarchist Second Casteu wrote a letter reporting the testimony of his daughter-in-law Marguerite, who had lived at La Ruche, accusing Faure of molesting the children there. After 1921 there are no further documented cases of sexual predation by Faure.