Paris, France, June 20, 2024: Gathering at place de la Bastille after the antisemitic rape of a 12-year-old girl in Courbevoie. Photography by Myriam Tirler / Hans Lucas

More than a year after the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, a French court has dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted in the attack, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”

On Tuesday, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure, the French news outlet Le Parisien first reported. 

“The court took into account the entire case as provided for by law: the facts, their seriousness, but also the personality of the minor and the need to prepare for future reintegration,” the boy’s lawyer, Melody Blanc, said in a statement. 

The original sentences, handed down in June, gave the two boys — who were 13 years old at the time of the incident — seven and nine years in prison, respectively, after they were convicted on charges of group rape, physical violence, and death threats aggravated by antisemitic hatred.

The third boy involved in the attack, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, was accused of threatening her and orchestrating the attack, also motivated by racist prejudice.

Because the girl’s ex-boyfriend was under 13 at the time of the attack, he did not face prison and was instead sentenced to five years in an educational facility. 

The lawyers of the victim, Muriel Ouaknine-Melki and Oudy Bloch, praised “the courage of [their] client” for confronting her attackers and ensuring that two of them were imprisoned.

According to police reports from the time, the two French boys cornered the girl on June 15, 2024, inside an empty building in Courbevoie, a northwestern suburb of Paris, questioned her about her Jewish identity, and then physically assaulted and raped her.

The assailants who were Muslim also allegedly called the victim a “dirty Jew” and uttered other antisemitic remarks during the brutal gang-rape.

Under threat of death, she was forced to perform penetrative and oral sex on two of the boys, while her ex-boyfriend threatened to burn her cheek with a lighter and attempted to make her sit on her handbag, which he had set ablaze.

Local reports indicate that part of the assault was recorded, and at least one assailant allegedly demanded 200 euros from the girl to withhold the footage, which was eventually circulated.

The ex-boyfriend sent footage of the assault to a boy the girl had gone out with that afternoon, with the message “Look at your chick,” according to law enforcement. After receiving such a message, the boy informed the girl’s family, who found her an hour after the attack.

“Before letting her leave, they made her swear on Allah not to say anything and that she should not tell anyone, neither her parents nor the police,” the girl’s mother told Le Parisien at the time.

The three-day trial, held behind closed doors, took place in a regional juvenile court in Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris.

During the proceedings, the judge explained that the severity of the sentence came “in view of their concerning personality traits and the immense social disturbance.”

“There is no doubt that [the victim] would not have been assaulted or raped if she had not been Jewish,” the judge said at the time.

The brutal crime sparked outrage throughout France and among the Jewish community, unfolding against the backdrop of a disturbing surge in antisemitism that has gripped the country since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.