William Molinié / Photo credit: XOSE BOUZAS / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
An hour and a half of wandering, confinement, beatings and humiliation. Ninety long minutes of ordeal endured in silence, on the public highway. A week after the events and while four suspects are about to be indicted, Europe 1 is able to retrace minute by minute the wild team of five young girls who attacked a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday last in the streets of Le Havre.
It is 5:15 p.m. when Amélia* leaves the Lavoisier high school where she attends school. She goes back to the bus stop to take line 3. On the way, rue Maryse Bastié, she feels that someone is pulling her backpack from behind. She recognizes three young girls, minors, whom she has already met. One is African, the other mixed race, another Arab. The latter say to him: “Come here. You, you are treating us, come today, you are going to suffer, come follow us!”
Filmed and broadcast live
Becoming frightened, Amélia tries to flee towards the bus stop. Held by the backpack, the arm and the hand by the three girls, she then heard: “You’re not going to leave, we’re going to hit you.” A wave of violence falls on him. Pulled by the hair and assaulted, the young girl received several slaps. Amélia is afraid but accepts it and stays silent. All under the camera of a smartphone which broadcasts the images live on the social network story of one of the teenagers.
A few minutes of calm. One of the girls is on the phone with a friend who just called her. The latter saw her story online. She also wants to participate in the lynching and arranges to meet them at Place Jenner. On the way, Amélia is struck again. “If you defend yourself, we will do worse,” his three torturers tell him. In the high school street, the group meets a passer-by on the sidewalk. The latter, witnessing the slaps that are being thrown, addresses Amélia: “Come with me”. Then adds towards the group of attackers: “You are not going to hit her, I will call the police”.
“I didn’t defend myself, I couldn’t”
The three girls order Amélia to run. Closely held, she hurries on, always in silence. Always docile. In front of the tram stop, she receives several slaps again, gratuitously. The pack gets on the train. His prey is well crafted, psychologically equipped. They go down Place Jenner. Where Amélia is then introduced to the fourth girl. The one who, on the phone, also wanted to participate in the slap game. She didn’t come alone. A fifth teenager is there. She will be responsible for filming.
Rue Maurice Donnay, the group stops. “What do we do to him?” asks one of the girls. Punches, knees, kicks… Ten minutes of fog during which young Amélia tries, as best she can, to protect herself. She curls up, hides her face with her hands, her vital parts. “I didn’t defend myself, I couldn’t,” she said, transfixed, the next day to the police.
After the physical violence, it’s time for humiliation. The four teenage girls ask him to get on his knees and ask for forgiveness. Sorry for calling them “whores” in a text message sent a few days before to a mutual friend’s phone. Five letters that mean he has to take off his jogging pants, his sweatshirt, his bra this evening. Amélia finds herself in her panties, in the middle of the street. For ten minutes, the gang films her, belittles her, hurts her. Until she is well subdued. Not being able to do anything more than cry.
Media and political indifference
A glimmer of hope. Passers-by seem to be arriving. One of the girls asks Amélia to get dressed quickly. The teenager complies. She knows she must do it quickly and above all in silence. “If you say that or if you file a complaint, we will do worse to you. We will kill you even more,” she hears. Amélia extricates herself with difficulty to try to regain her senses. The slaps are less frequent. In front of a tobacconist in Place Jenner, seeing the state the young girl is in, a woman dressed in a niqab offers to take her home.
In the car, Amélia takes a photo of her swollen, bruised face. She sends it to her mother, worried to death at not seeing her daughter return. The teenager, still in shock, tells him that she has just had a scooter accident. The moment she crosses the threshold, she collapses into her mother’s arms. For Amélia, in addition to the traces on her body from the Le Havre asphalt, the stigma of this wild adventure now extends to social networks. Where snippets of videos continue to be shared. Below the alert threshold, it seems, from the government information service.
*The first name of the victim, a minor, has been changed, as provided for in the penal code.