Indictments, educational measures… three very young teenagers are suspected of having participated in a particularly heinous attack and rape on a 12-year-old girl, against a backdrop of anti-Semitism. Here’s what we know at this point.
Their young age contrasts with the seriousness and atrocity of the facts with which they are accused. A 12-year-old girl filed a complaint of rape at the police station last weekend. The victim claims that she was attacked by three boys, all also minors, in Courbevoie, according to information from our colleagues at Parisianunveiled this Tuesday, June 18.
The day after these revelations, we learned that two teenagers were indicted Tuesday evening for gang rape, death threats, insults and anti-Semitic violence against a 12-year-old minor.
What measures towards the three suspects?
According to the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office, a third suspect, also a minor, was placed under the status of assisted witness for rape and indicted for the other offenses targeted by the investigation.
Two of the three teenagers, aged 13, were placed under committal order by a judge of freedoms and detention, while the third, aged 12, was the subject of a judicial educational measure provisional, according to the same source.
They were presented Tuesday afternoon to an investigating judge as part of a judicial investigation opened in particular for gang rape and sexual assault of a 15-year-old minorattempted extortion, invasion of privacy and death threats.
What happened ?
According to a police source, the minor explained that she was approached by three teenagers and dragged into a shed while she was in a park near her home with a friend. France Info indicates that one of the suspects was the victim’s ex-boyfriend.
The suspects hit her and “imposed anal and vaginal penetration on him, fellatio, while uttering death threats and anti-Semitic remarks”, said the same source.
His friend managed to identify two of the attackers. The teenager was taken care of by firefighters and transported to the Garches medical-judicial unit (west of Paris).
“Unprecedented anti-Semitic surge”
The offenses of “violence and insults” are “aggravated by their commission due to the victim’s affiliation to a religion”said the public prosecutor.
The president of the Central Consistory, Elie Korchia, expressed in a tweet Tuesday evening his “support for this young victim, of Jewish faith, who suffered rape and unbearable attacks”deploring “a sordid and despicable sexual crime that moves us deeply.”
“No one can be excused from this unprecedented anti-Semitic surge”commented on X the chief rabbi of France Haïm Korsia, saying “horrified”.
On the same social network, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif) said its “immense emotion in the face of the tragic rape of this young girl”, judging this “extremely worrying matter”.
“It’s a despicable act, we can’t think that it still exists”reacted to AFP Jacques Kossowski, Les Républicains (LR) mayor of Courbevoie, calling for a conviction “farm” of the “aggressors, regardless of their age”. “It is time that anti-Semitic acts […] be punished much more severely.”reacted Senator LR from Hauts-de-Seine Roger Karoutchi.
Increase in anti-Semitic acts
Anti-Semitic acts soared in France in the first quarter of 2024, according to government figures, which reported “366 anti-Semitic acts” recorded between January and March, an increase of 300% over one year.
In January, Crif reported a sharp increase in anti-Semitic acts in France, quadrupling in one year, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, with an “explosion” after October 7 and the attack carried out by the movement. Palestinian Islamist Hamas in Israel.
