The affair arouses great emotion in the Jewish community and beyond. Two 13-year-old teenagers were indicted late Tuesday, June 18, for gang rape, death threats, insults and violence of an anti-Semitic nature against a 12-year-old girl in Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine). , town west of Paris. A third suspect, the age of the victim, was placed under the status of assisted witness for rape and indicted for the other offenses covered by the investigation, said the Nanterre prosecutor’s office. During the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, requested that a “exchange time” on racism and anti-Semitism be organized in schools. Franceinfo brings together what we know about this affair.
Facts denounced Saturday evening by a 12-year-old girl
The events took place on Saturday, early in the evening, according to a police source at franceinfo. According to the victim’s account, the suspects met her in a park near her home. The three teenagers, one of whom was her ex-boyfriend, dragged her into a shed. The young girl claims that her attackers called her a “dirty Jew” and asked him “why didn’t she say she was Jewish”, Franceinfo learned from a source close to the investigation. The teenager replied that she wanted “to protect yourself” of a possible attack. They threatened to burn her, insulted her and beat her, before all three raped her, one after the other. According to the victim, one of the attackers filmed the scene.
The young girl was taken care of by firefighters and transported to the Garches medical-judicial unit (Hauts-de-Seine), according to AFP. Following these denunciations, an investigation into the aggravated rape of a 15-year-old minor was opened. The investigations were first entrusted to the Courbevoie police station, then, the next day, to the Hauts-de-Seine Territorial Family Protection Brigade.
Three boys aged 12 and 13 implicated
The investigation led to two minors aged 13 years old being arrested and placed in police custody on Monday in the middle of the day. A third younger teenager, aged 12, was placed in detention, as provided for by law for young minors.
Presented to an investigating judge on Tuesday afternoon, two of them are, as part of a judicial investigation, indicted for aggravated rape, sexual assault, attempted extortion and violence committed in a meeting, against a minor of 15 years, as well as for invasion of privacy by fixing, recording or transmitting the image of a person of a sexual nature, repeated death threats and insults, “because of religion”, the victim being of Jewish faith. An aggravating circumstance only retained for insults and death threats, and not for rape and sexual assault. These two minors were placed in pre-trial detention by the judge of freedoms and detention.
The third boy, aged 12, was placed under the status of assisted witness concerning the acts of rape, but he is indicted for the rest of the offenses. He is the subject of a provisional judicial educational measure.
The Jewish community expresses its “immense emotion”
“No one can be exonerated in the face of this unprecedented anti-Semitic surge,” commented on the social network “horrified”.
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”. He deplores “a sordid and despicable sexual crime that moves us deeply”. 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”. Crif assures that it will follow “watch closely all developments in this extremely worrying matter.”
The Nous Vivrons collective, born the day after the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, calls for demonstrations in Paris, Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., to “condemn the anti-Semitic rape of this young girl”.
“Rape is a tool of destruction in the service of hatred and when children rape children, it is also society as a whole which must ask itself the question of its responsibility in the face of violence, anti-Semitism and misogyny in the work in our country”reacted, for its part, the Women’s Foundation.
Multiple political reactions, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to Marine Le Pen
While this affair arises in the middle of the campaign for the early legislative elections, political leaders have not failed to comment and condemn the facts. The Les Républicains (LR) mayor of Courbevoie, Jacques Kossowski, was the first to react. “It’s a despicable act, we can’t think that it still exists,” he told AFP. “What I hope is that justice can firmly condemn these attackers, whatever their age”continued the city councilor.
“Rape, anti-Semitism: everything is abominable in this crime”, reacted the Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet. Sylvain Maillard, former president of the Renaissance group in the National Assembly, confided his “horror at this anti-Semitic rape”. “Anti-Semitism must be fought from an early age and punished severely,” he insisted.
On the left, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, castigated the “scourge” of “anti-Semitic hatred”. “The fight against anti-Semitism must be waged without weakness and without respite”he insisted. “Words fail me in the face of this horror story”reacted on Wednesday, the boss of the Greens, Marine Tondelier. “Anti-Semitism and violence against women are gaping wounds in our society. We must face this reality and act resolutely,” she wrote on the social network
In the process, the outgoing deputy of the Somme François Ruffin also denounced, on “horrible anti-Semitic rape”. “This heinous crime must strike us deeply, on what it reveals : the crass machismo of young men for whom women’s bodies are a thing, which belong to them”, he said. “Horrified by this rape in Courbevoie and everything it highlights regarding the conditioning of criminal male behavior from a young age, and anti-Semitic racism”declared, in the same vein, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, regularly accused of ambiguous comments on anti-Semitism.
Her comments also provoked a reaction from Marine Le Pen, who also spoke on X. The leader of the National Rally denounced “the anti-Semitic attack and rape of a 12-year-old child”before criticizing “the stigmatization of Jews for months by the far left through the instrumentalization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. “Everyone must be fully aware of this on June 30 and July 7,” concluded the leader of the far-right party, referring to the dates of the first and second rounds of the early legislative elections.