French teenage girl assaulted at Jewish school

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, which prosecutor may or may not be anti-Semitic, occurred last week at the Ozar-Hatorah school in Sarcelles, Le Parisien reported Wednesday. The victim did not know the three individuals, who appeared to be teenagers, who threatened to “gouge out the eyes and pull the hair” from her head at the entrance, she told police.

The girl ran back into the school for safety but the three teenagers who confronted her followed her in, cornering her and delivering blows to her bodies. Two of them pulled at her hair while a third filmed the incident on a cell phone, 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 girl’s mother and the girl filed a complaint for assault 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 working to identify the alleged perpetrators, also using security camera footage of the incident. The report did not say whether the suspects are male of female.

Assaults inside Jewish schools, which are heavily guarded in France, are rare in that country.

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.

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