Gang Rapists Go On Trial

I came upon this story in Défrancisation and thought I'd pass it along, although it's one of many. The statistics are incredible. The original source article is from L'Express.

Fifteen men, 29-33 years of age, accused of gang raping two teenage girls, Nina (real name) and Stéphanie (a pseudo), between 1999 and 2001 will be judged starting this Tuesday by the juvenile criminal court of Val-de-Marne.  The case known as the "tournantes" returns.

Note: "Tournante", from the verb "tourner", "to turn", refers to a gang rape in which the rapists take turns raping their trapped victim.

Note too that 13 years have gone by.

Nina (above) was 16 the first time she was raped in 1999. She was going home from the movies when she was accosted by boys, hardly much older than she. They began to hit her, then abuse her. This horror became a daily event: for six months, she was beaten, raped several times by the youth of the ghetto, sometimes by all of them together, every day. Others eyed her. They threatened to burn her apartment and assault her little brother if she talked. The torture stopped thanks to the intervention by another young man from the ghetto. But she kept her secret for six years before telling all to a policewoman.

Mahamadou Doucouré (above) was not one of the gang leaders in the ghetto of Fontenay-sous-Bois, but he was without any doubt the most virulent. He was also suspected of murdering his former girlfriend and of kidnapping her son. For this reason he will be one of the central figures in the trial. It was because of the umpteenth act of violence that the affair of the gang rapists came to light and that one of the victims decided to talk. "Even after the rapes were over, he continued to hit me when he saw me coming home from work or if I was with somebody. Then he would ring my mother's bell and beg her not to file a complaint," she told Le Parisien.

Thirteen years after the fact, Nina and Stéphanie will face their executioners. The men admit they had sexual relations with the girls but deny it was forced. For them, the girls consented. The victims' lawyer, Clotilde Lepetit, explains: "The girls would like them to admit what they did, and that they caused suffering. But they have no illusions about this, and neither do I".

Between 5000 and 7000 gang rapes are committed every year in France. According to organizations (that keep crime statistics, I assume), if these crimes are often associated with the suburbs, in reality they are committed in all milieus. Several cases of gang rapes were reported during university orientation evening events. 

Note: Seven thousand!!!

An article in Libération, that provided the photo of Nina (above), also gives more details of what happened to her. What is so astonishing is that she and her mother continued to live in proximity to the criminals and pass them on the street for years thereafter. From the picture we see that Nina is white (see also link to video below).

Here is a detailed account of the crime:

Witnesses saw about fifty boys standing in line in the courtyard of the day care center where Nina, pushed against the children's playhouse, was being assaulted. One of the rapists explained that sometimes there were so many people that everyone could not get his chance. For him, as for the others, there was no doubt that Nina was consenting, that she liked sex.

Nina, who had been a very pretty girl, with a slim figure, long dark hair and wide brown eyes today weighs 250 lb. She gained 140 lb. after the rapes. "I made a carapace for myself, like a tortoise." She would sometimes like to disappear completely. "When I look at my body in the mirror, I see what they did to me."

The next paragraph describes the first rape itself in detail.

The next day they waited for her and dragged her into an apartment where she was raped by several boys from another gang. The same torture took place in the days that followed. Sometimes several boys raped her at the same time. She would cry and vomit. One of the gang crushed his cigarette above the chest. Nina was so afraid, she felt she would never be capable of talking about her ordeal. Her mother asked her questions, seeing that she washed herself eight, ten times a day. But Nina said nothing. Her torturers "promised" to burn her apartment and attack her brother and mother. The rapes continued every day, for about six months.

Note: I don't see how the mother could not have known. Wasn't the girl ever bloody from the beatings, the violent rapes, both vaginal and anal? Weren't her clothes a mess? Wasn't her hair unkempt and her face swollen from being hit? Did the girl seek medical help? If she did her mother must have known, unless there is a way of anonymously getting medical treatment in rape cases. But if she was repeatedly raped over many months, wouldn't the doctors who examined her have alerted the authorities? If she was never examined by a doctor she risked pregnancy and disease. I find these stories hard to believe, yet I have no reason to doubt them.

Nina described another girl Stéphanie who was also being repeatedly raped. The two girls still live in the Fontenay project where they often run into the accused rapists. Nina relates: "For three years I was in a foster home, because the judge wanted me far away. I changed lodging twenty times, I was exhausted, I had no money. Several times I had to dial 115  (emergency shelter for the homeless). So I went back to my mother in Fontenay." Neither Nina nor Stéphanie received financial aid. On anti-depressants and sleeping pills, she was declared 80% incapable of working. "I stopped school, I stopped my little jobs, I stopped everything."

Note: So she did see doctors. But this must have been after she told the authorities. Or at least after she finally told her mother. Still, there seems to be a long period of six years when she said nothing, and her mother did not know, and infectious disease was possible, even likely, under these circumstances.

Also, why did she not receive financial aid. Any immigrant, illiterate, violent, lazy, opportunistic, can get financial assistance. Why not these two?

She will always remember a boy named M., whom she knew by sight. One day he came into the cellar and saw that she way crying. He shouted to the rapists "Get out of here". Miraculously, they left. "That night it was over," she says. "I thought it would start up again, but it didn't. They never came back." Three of them continued to beat her when they ran into her. One day in 2005, she lost consciousness. Bloodied, her face fractured, at the hospital she talked.

It ends with the arrest of eighteen boys who either denied or minimized the crimes. They said she did it "for the pleasure", because "she was a whore". They said that "everybody knew" Nina and Stéphanie were participating in the rapes, that "it was consensual." "If the girl is there it's because she agrees," they concluded.

This is another re-play of the gang rape trial of 2011, in Avignon, where a girl had been repeatedly raped by Muslim thugs, the rapists said she enjoyed it, the psychiatrists said the boys were merely going through a phase, and the sentences were light, due in part to the massive presence of the rapists' families in the courtroom and the power these people wield over the French (in)justice system.

A video at TF1 gives a good view of Nina, and her friend Stéphanie. They are white, but clearly of the lower classes. They seem to have tattoos, but it isn't certain. Nina is terribly overweight and looks like a toughie. She must have, in a way, accepted (not agreed to) what was happening as a kind of predictable consequence of living in a project with immigrants. I think a lot of poorer young whites in Europe and America are completely forgotten by the justice systems, and are turning to crime and prostitution instead of rising to the next level. They cannot rise, because their place on the next rung is already taken by immigrants. Their health is often poor and their appearance is not attractive.  Not having a father at home is also a handicap.

Their lawyer Clotilde Lepetit says they do not want revenge only justice in the noble sense of the word. The lawyer is a nice woman, with no apparent sense of outrage. She has said she doubts justice will prevail. As a lawyer she knows well the infamy of the courts that favor immigrant criminals over French girls, especially of the poorer classes.