What happened on Saturday, June 15, in the northwestern Paris suburb of Courbevoie? On Tuesday, three teenagers aged between 12 and 13 were charged, as part of a judicial investigation, with "aggravated rape, aggravated sexual assault, attempted extortion, invasion of privacy, death threats, violence and insults, the latter two offenses being aggravated (...) because of the victim's religious affiliation." They are suspected of assaulting a 12-year-old Jewish girl. The news drew strong reactions from the Jewish community and unanimous condemnation from politicians.

The account of the girl's "ordeal," as the police officers called it in their report seen by Le Monde, is unbearable. The document recounts the victim's statements and the observations made by police officers at the scene of the alleged events.

It happened on Saturday, June 15, when the girl, S. (all initials have been changed), who will be 13 in a month's time, left her family's home to meet her friend R. at 1 pm. They spent almost two hours together in a Courbevoie park, before R. walked his friend to a square near her home. It was at this point that S. ran into three other boys, two of them barely older than her.

P., who appeared to be the leader of the group, ordered her to stay with them and, when the girl refused, fearing that her parents would be worried about her coming home late, he became even more insistent. He then grabbed her arm and dragged her toward a vast 1,000-square-meter building, an out-of-use crèche, where the "ordeal" began.

According to the girl's account, P. began by asking her about her religion – her family is Jewish – and in particular why she had "hidden" it. "She said she wanted to protect herself to avoid any aggression," write the officers, who returned to the scene that evening with the victim. At that point, they began to hit and insult her. She told the police they called her a "dirty Jew."

'Horror'

According to the police report, she was thrown to the ground, her hair pulled back, a lighter lit next to her cheek, then a bag containing her identity documents was burnt and a bottle of water was emptied onto her body. At the scene, forensic investigators found a bottle and charred debris. She was undressed "by force" and raped several times. After that, the police write, the young man who appeared throughout the account to be the leader of the trio "threatened the victim with death if she spoke to the police" and asked to meet her at 4 pm the following day, ordering her to hand over a sum of €200, "or else something bad would happen to her and her family."

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