Teenage girl assaulted at Jewish school near Paris

Prosecutor says it has not been established whether the incident was an anti-Semitic attack

A 15-year-old girl was assaulted inside her Jewish school near Paris by three individuals who confronted her outside the establishment and then pursued her into its yard, a French daily reported.

The incident occurred last week at the Ozar-Hatorah school in Sarcelles, Le Parisien reported Wednesday. The prosecutor is trying to establish whether the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism.

The victim told police she did not know the three individuals who appeared to be teenagers and approached her at the entrance to the school before threatening to “gouge out the eyes and pull the hair” from her head.

The girl ran back into the school for safety but the three followed her in, cornering her and hitting her. Two of them pulled her hair while a third filmed the incident on a cellphone, the report said. The violence continued for several minutes despite the presence on campus of a security guard, according to the report. A teacher finally put a stop to it.

The teenager and her mother filed a complaint with police on June 7. The local prosecutor’s office told Le Parisien: “The alleged anti-Semitic character of the incident has not been established in certain terms at this stage of the investigation.”

Police are using security camera footage of the assault to try to identify the alleged perpetrators. The report did not say whether the suspects are male or female.

Assaults inside French Jewish schools, which are heavily guarded, are rare.

Whereas in the 1990s the majority of Jewish children attended public schools in France, only a third of them do so today, according to Francis Kalifat, the head of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities. Thousands have left the public education system due to anti-Semitism, he said.