Almost one year after the rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl near Paris, a regional juvenile court on Wednesday initiated the closed-door trial of two defendants accused of performing the act out of antisemitic hatred, and a third accused of orchestrating it. All three are aged 13 to 14.
Two of the three suspects face charges of group rape, physical violence and death threats aggravated by racist hate, the RTL broadcaster reported. The third, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, is accused of threatening her and arranging her rape, also out of racist prejudice.
The Rape of Courbevoie, the affluent Paris suburb where the incident took place, has provoked several demonstrations and widespread outrage among French Jews, who view it as symptomatic of the pervasiveness and intensity of the antisemitism that has surged in France since Oct. 7, 2023.
The trial’s year-long preparation and the fact that the ex-boyfriend faces no jail time due to the fact that he was not yet 13 when the incident occurred have added to the Jewish community’s anger.
According to the girl, RTL reported, two of the defendants cornered her into an empty building on June 15, 2024, in Courbevoie, 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 euros 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 complainant 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 defendants, her ex-boyfriend, stopped her.
The girl and that defendant had had a short fling 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, who reported the incident to authorities. A forensic gynaecologist examined the girl that evening, determining the findings were consistent with the girl’s account, according to reports.
The alleged rapists face, if convicted, incarceration at a juvenile facility, potentially for several years. The ex-boyfriend would receive only “educative measures” due to his age at the time of the alleged assault. 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.
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 the previous year, 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.
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