This charge carries a 3 year sentence. Anyone think they will actually go to prison?
Could be tempted
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/20/franck-ribery-charged-soliciting-underage-prostitute
The summer of shame engulfing French football reached a new low today as two players were charged with soliciting an underage prostitute.
Franck Ribéry, 27, a midfielder for Bayern Munich and part of the French international side that left the World Cup in ignominy, and Real Madrid's Karim Benzema, 22, face up to three years in prison and a fine of €45,000 (£37,600) if convicted.
Both men deny any wrongdoing. Benzema, 22, has said he is "unaffected'' by the allegations, which centre around a former sex worker, Zahia Dehar, who claims she was solicited separately by the players when she was 16. Ribéry, who is married and has two children, has admitted having sex with Dehar, but insists he was unaware of her age.
In France, although the legal age for consenting sex is 15, soliciting a prostitute who is under 18 is a crime.
The investigation into the sordid trade allegedly going on in the Zaman Cafe on the Champs Elysées was revealed in April when the late-night bar was raided by police and more than a dozen women were arrested.
Dehar, one of the women working there, told police she had been paid to have sex with several French soccer stars, including Ribéry, Benzema and Sidney Govou, another player for Les Bleus.
He is alleged to have called on Dehar's services in March, when she was above the legal age of consent. According to the testimony of Dehar and Ribéry, the former sex worker, who is now 18, never told her clients she was underage – a key factor in such cases.
Investigators from Paris's equivalent of the vice squad have been trying to establish whether or not, when he asked her to fly to Bavaria for his birthday celebrations in April, Ribéry bought Dehar's plane ticket. If he did, they argue, he would have known her date of birth.
Sophie Bottai, Ribéry's lawyer, told French radio that for her client to be found guilty "he would have had to know her age, which was not the case. She would have had to look like a minor, which was not the case. She would have to be claiming that she had told him she was a minor, which is not the case."
The saga, which was put on hold during the World Cup, has thrown a spotlight on France's younger generation of soccer stars who are struggling to inspire the respect which fans had for their predecessors.
Even before they jetted to South Africa, many of the players had shaken France's usually firm pride in Les Bleus with a combination of dispiriting performances on the pitch and unseemly and extravagant lifestyles off it.
When their 2010 bid for World Cup glory ended in defeat, mutiny and foul language, the sense of malaise was reinforced – and Nicolas Sarkozy summoned veteran Thierry Henry to explain himself. Henry – a member of the legendary squad which won the World Cup for France in 1998 – last week announced that he would never again play for Les Bleus.
Could be tempted