A French court yesterday sentenced two teenagers to nine and seven years in prison over the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl last year outside Paris.
The crime, when both were 13, shocked France’s Jewish community at a time of rising antisemitic attacks, reports AFP.
The presiding judge justified the harsh sentence against the two boys as being due to their “worrying” personalities, “the immense social disturbance” they caused to society, and the crime being committed on religious grounds.
She undoubtedly “would not have been raped if she had not been Jewish”, the judge said at a juvenile court in Nanterre, a suburb of western Paris.
A third boy, an ex-boyfriend of the girl who was also aged 12 at the time, was found guilty of being complicit in the crime but not sentenced to jail due to his young age.
The court ordered that he be placed in the foster system and followed by professionals for five years.
The girl told police she was approached by the three boys on June 15, 2024, while in a park near her home in the northwestern Paris suburb of Courbevoie, close to the La Defense financial district.
She told investigators she was dragged into an abandoned daycare centre where the suspects beat her and “forced” her to have sex “while uttering death threats and antisemitic remarks”.
She said the boys had called her a “dirty Jew” and asked her questions about “her Jewish religion” and Israel.
The rape was filmed by one boy, and another threatened to kill the girl if she reported the ordeal to authorities, police sources said.
The attack had shocked the Jewish community in France and was unanimously condemned by politicians.
At the time, President Emmanuel Macron had denounced the “scourge” of antisemitism.
Several demonstrations in support of the victim were held in Paris and in Courbevoie.
Reported antisemitic acts in France surged from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, before dipping slightly to 1,570 last year, according to the interior ministry.
Jewish groups have said that the number of such attacks rose sharply following the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, which was followed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip and aid blockade.
