The 12-year-old girl who was gang-raped in an antisemitic incident in France was asked to convert to Islam by her attackers, her parents told the French media outlet Le Parisien.
"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," her mother said in the interview.
The girl had reported to the police last week that she had been gang raped by three teenagers aged between 12-14 in what has been characterized as an antisemitic crime, according to Le Parisien.
The girl's father described the impact the attack has had on his daughter. The "shock caused her to have flashbacks at night. She has difficulty falling asleep and wakes up at night. It's a pretty painful daily life," he said to Le Parisien. "Her attackers stole her childhood."
The father has no doubt that this is an antisemitic attack and linked it to the "importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into France."
The victim's mother said that one of her daughter's attackers told her, "I know you're not Muslim... So, what religion are you?"
The mother added that when the attacker learned that her daughter was Jewish, he deduced that she must be pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian.
Prior harassment of the victim
This is not the first antisemitic attack that her daughter experienced in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, added the mother.
"After October 7, our daughter suffered harassment at her school and was ostracized because of her religion. It started during the month of November with Nazi salutes, swastikas on tables at school, and jokes about the Holocaust. She lost several Muslim friends this way without it leading to physical violence," she told LeParisien.
The crime occurred in the Parisian suburb of Courbevoie.