JNS
The boy is one of three who conspired to lure a Jewish girl into a deserted building.
A French court last week reduced by two years the nine-year prison sentence of a 15-year-old boy who participated in the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl because of her ethnic identity.
The boy, who was 13 when he committed his crimes, will receive “educational instruction” instead of the two years that had been deducted from his prison sentence, the Versailles Appeals Court ruled on Nov. 18.
The boy is one of three teenagers who, in June 2024, conspired to lure a Jewish girl from their neighborhood near Paris into a deserted building, where two of them hurled antisemitic insults at her and then raped her.
All three boys were convicted last year and two of them were sentenced to nine years in prison. The third was younger than 13 at the time of the crime and was therefore not handed a prison sentence but given “educational corrective guidance” instead of prison time. The names of the perpetrators, victims and other underage people linked to the case have not been made public.
The sentence of the second boy who was sent to juvenile prison has not been reduced. That boy’s lawyer has not appealed it, the Le Parisien newspaper reported.
Muriel Ouaknine-Melki and Oudy Bloch, the victim’s lawyers, told Le Parisien that they do not object to the sentence reduction, noting that the beneficiary has shown signs of “owning” his crimes, as the newspaper quoted the lawyers as saying.
The two teenagers who were jailed were convicted of group rape, physical violence and death threats aggravated by racist hate. The third and youngest, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, is accused of threatening her and arranging her rape, also out of racist prejudice.
The rape in Courbevoie, the affluent Paris suburb where the incident took place, shocked French Jews and others, who view it as symptomatic of the pervasiveness and intensity of the antisemitism that has surged in France since Oct. 7, 2023, and of the effects of pornography and online bullying on teenagers.
Two of the defendants cornered the girl into an empty building in Courbevoie on June 15, 2024, questioned her about her Jewish identity in the context of the war in Gaza, and then physically assaulted and raped her.
Part of the assault was reportedly recorded. At least one assailant allegedly extorted the girl, demanding €200 ($230) in exchange for not releasing the footage, which was later circulated.
The girl’s parents had given her permission to spend a few hours on the afternoon of June 15, 2024, in their suburb’s commercial center with her boyfriend, a boy of her age, the news site 20 Minutes reported. The boy walked the victim to her residential building at about 6 p.m. and said goodbye a few dozen yards from the entrance. However, as she walked into the building, one of the later convicted teens, her ex-boyfriend, stopped her.
The girl and that teenager had had a short romance that spring, but he ended it after finding out she was Jewish and not Muslim as he had thought, according to 20 Minutes. The girl later explained to police that she had lied about being Muslim to avoid being thought of as Jewish at her school and thus a target for harassment, the report said.
The ex-boyfriend allegedly sent graphic material of the assault to the boy she had gone out with that afternoon, with the text: “Look at your chick.”
According to reports in the French media, the boy alerted the complainant’s mother, who went searching for her and found her about an hour later. The girl told her parents about the rape, who then reported the incident to authorities. A forensic gynecologist examined the girl that evening, determining the findings were consistent with the girl’s account, according to reports.
The girl’s family has moved house and enrolled her in a different school, but she suffered serious emotional damage, a lawyer for the family told RTL.
Previous attacks
In 2014, three Muslim men were implicated in the rape of a Jewish woman in Creteil, in suburban Paris. They broke into a home there, tortured a Jewish man in his 20s, telling him they knew his family had money because they’re Jewish and that they were taking revenge for their “brothers in Palestine.” One of the men raped the man’s girlfriend in another room. They were sentenced to eight, 13 and 16 years in jail.
Last year saw the highest number of antisemitic physical assaults in France in more than a decade, with 106 reported cases documented by the SPCJ (Service de protection de la communauté juive). Most antisemitic incidents in France are perpetrated by Muslims or people from Muslim-majority countries or backgrounds, according to the BNVCA (Bureau national de vigilance contre l’antisémitisme).
The total number of antisemitic acts recorded last year—1,570—has slightly decreased from the 1,676 reported 2023, but the 2024 tally is still one of the highest on record. In the years 2012-2022, France saw an average of 540 antisemitic incidents annually.
The Hamas-led murders of Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel triggered an increase in antisemitic rhetoric and violence in France. In the month that followed the attacks, more than 1,000 antisemitic acts were documented in France, then-Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
