Trial opens for 3 French boys charged with antisemitic gang rape of Jewish girl

The trial opens today for three French boys charged with the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in 2024 outside Paris, a crime that shocked the Jewish community at a time of rising antisemitic attacks.

The trial, which is due to last until Friday, is being held at a juvenile court in Nanterre, a suburb of western Paris.

Two boys, aged 13 at the time, are being tried on charges of the gang rape of a minor on religious grounds. The third, then aged 12, is accused of being complicit in the crime.

All three boys are charged with sexual assault on a minor as well as recording and sharing sexual images, aggravated by being committed on religious grounds.

The girl told police she was approached by the three boys on June 15, 2024, in a park near her home in the northwestern Paris suburb of Courbevoie, close to the La Defense financial district.

She was dragged into a shed where the suspects beat her and “forced” her to have sex “while uttering death threats and antisemitic remarks,” one police source had told AFP.

Muriel Ouaknine-Melki, one of the victim’s lawyers, tells the court that their client “expects that the aggressors will be punished for what they did and that the punishment is in line with the gravity of their actions.”

Clementine Berthier, the defense lawyer for one of the suspects, says she hopes “the trial would be serene and peaceful for all parties.”