French police announced on Wednesday that they have charged two adolescent boys in a Paris suburb with raping a 12-year-old girl and engaging in religiously motivated violence.
The event has prompted a broad uproar in France, which has been dealing with increased antisemitism since the commencement of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and has fueled antisemitic charges ahead of difficult elections on June 30 and July 7.
Related posts
To protect the victim, the prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, the western suburb of Paris that initiated the inquiry into the alleged attack, did not specify the girl’s faith or reveal her identity, as is customary in France for hate crimes.
However, lawyer and Jewish leader Elie Korchia stated in an interview with French network BFM that the girl is Jewish, and figures from across France’s political spectrum condemned what they described as an antisemitic incident.
Anti-Semitic attacks increased in France after Hamas struck southern Israel on October 7, initiating the Gaza conflict.
When contacted by NBC News, police in Courbevoie, where the alleged rape occurred, declined to provide additional information or confirmation of the attack’s circumstances, as well as the identity of the accuser or suspects.
The Nanterre prosecutor’s office reported that the child reported a rape on Saturday, leading to the arrest of three boys, ages 12 and 13.
On Tuesday, authorities charged two of the boys with a number of preliminary offenses, including aggravated gang rape on a child under the age of 15, violence and public insult motivated by religion, death threats, attempted extortion, and unlawfully recording or transmitting sexual photos.
The prosecutor’s office announced that they are holding the two boys in custody while they conduct further investigation. The prosecutor’s office identified the third boy as an assisted witness to the alleged rape and enrolled him in a special education program. According to the prosecutor’s office, the three lads “expressed regret towards the victim without addressing their involvement.”
Political leaders from all sides of the political spectrum condemned the purported attack and urged an immediate reaction.
On X, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal voiced “horror and outrage at this monstrous and despicable act” and underlined a “determination to fight, unceasingly, without counting the cost, against antisemitism.”
In a press conference on Thursday, Attal stated, “We’ve seen a type of uncontrolled antisemitism evolve and break loose. And I believe that political leaders and political parties have a responsibility to create barriers that prevent certain types of discourse from becoming prevalent.”
President Emmanuel Macron has ordered schools to have a “discussion hour” on racism and antisemitism this week.
Interior Minister Gรฉrald Darmanin called the alleged incident “awful” and said police had limited capacity to avoid such violence. “The problem stems from parental power. “It’s a societal problem,” he told BFM television.
France is in the midst of a blitz campaign for snap parliamentary elections, and the front-runner, the far-right National Rally Party, has pushed to make security and immigration central campaign issues.
National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said France must combat an “antisemitic atmosphere” that has existed since the beginning of the war in Gaza, using outrage over the alleged attack as a springboard for his campaign priority of “the restoration of authority and order on every square meter of the territory.”
Opponents have accused the National Rally and the hard-left France Unbowed party in the Popular Front alliance of allowing antisemitic beliefs among their members, which both parties deny.
“Horrified by this rape in Courbevoie and all that it brings to light concerning the conditioning of male criminal behavior from an early age, as well as antisemitic racism,” Jean-Luc Mรฉlenchon, leader of France Unbowed, wrote on X, asking that “we don’t turn this crime and the suffering it causes into a media circus.”
France Unbowed is the most prominent critic of Israel’s assault in Gaza, and it has faced accusations of antisemitism from both the centrist prime minister, Attal, and the far-right former presidential contender, Marine Le Pen.
“The stigmatization of Jews over the past months by the extreme left, using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an instrument, is a real threat to civil peace,” Le Pen said on X, linking her claims to the approaching elections.
On Wednesday evening, hundreds of people gathered in front of Paris City Hall to condemn antisemitism. Many people in the throng held signs, some of which said “raped because she’s Jewish.”
