The parents of the 12-year-old Jewish student kidnapped, insulted and raped by a group of minors on June 15 in Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris) spoke for the first time this Monday and attributed the attack suffered by their daughter to the increase in antisemitism in France.
“Our daughter has experienced anti-Semitism firsthand”the parents said in statements to the newspaper Le Parisian,
“She is very shocked. “Her attackers have stolen her childhood.”, said the minor’s father. According to the man, her daughter has difficulty falling asleep due to “flashbacks” and she wakes up at night. Although she “managed to find the words to explain to the police what had happened to her” the day after the attack, the young woman “It’s harder for you to trust them” since then.
In addition to recounting the psychological state of the teenager, the parents returned to the context of the attack, which their lawyers described as “punitive expedition”.
“It’s about a clearly antisemitic act which is linked to the importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to France. The punitive expedition consisted of coming to massacre a person for being Jewish.”said the mother.
The attack occurred in the middle of increase in anti-Semitic acts recorded in France after the attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas to Israel on October 7 and the beginning of the war in Loop. The Ministry of the Interior recorded 1,676 anti-Semitic attacks last yeara four-fold increase from 2022. Most recorded acts took place in November and December and French Jews have expressed alarm for their safety.
The young woman’s case was another of these cases, the parents said.
“After October 7, [ella] “She suffered bullying at school and was ostracized for her religion,” they said. “She started in November with Nazi salutes, swastikas on school tables and jokes about the Shoah. He has lost several Muslim friends in this way, but it has not led to physical violence.”
Due to the situation, the parents said they asked their daughter to “be cautious with matters related to religion”.
According to them, it was for these reasons that their daughter told one of her attackers – whom she had met a few weeks before the episode during a student visit to the Olympic hockey venue in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) – that she was Muslim. .
Did to avoid being considered “pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian”in the words of his mother.
“The reality is very different, because our daughter, like us, is on the side of peace”said his father.
“We are not experiencing residual anti-Semitism, but strong, visible, palpable anti-Semitism.””explained the mother. “Our daughter experienced it firsthand at school before being subjected to the unthinkable on June 15.”
According to the couple, “in some sectors of public opinion there has been created an assimilation between Israel, seen as the aggressor of the Palestinian people, and French Jewswho are now singled out and denounced for events that occurred several thousand kilometers away.”
The parents also expressed the “very painful” feeling that this tragedy is being exploited “by all political parties” and they said they wanted to stay away from everything announcementin a case that shocked French society.
The parents sent a message “to alert the consciences of parents and children, whatever their faith, so that this type of tragedy is not repeated.”
The couple asked that “a distinction be made between an extremely hot conflict taking place abroad, on the one hand, and French Jews, on the other.” Because, they stressed, for them ““There is a mimicry between the acts perpetrated by the Hamas terrorists in the kibbutz and what our daughter suffered below, in Courbevoie.”
Finally, the parents launched a call to French society.
“We hope that French society becomes fully aware of the level of violence and hatred that 13-year-old children are capable of perpetrating against another child, under the pretext that he is Jewish”they said. “Our tragedy is also a sign of the collective failure of our society, which appears incapable of combating this radical Islam that is corrupting even the minds of children in its most extreme forms.”
Three minors between 12 and 13 years old were accused on June 18 of aggravated rape and anti-Semitic violence. Two of the minors under 13 years of age have been accused of “gang rape”, “group sexual assault”, “attempted extortion”, “group violence”, “death threats and religious insults”. Both were placed in preventive detention. The third child, aged 12, has been placed under witness protection on rape charges. He is being investigated for the rest of the crimes.
