LE HAVRE, France – Five adolescents in the port city of Le Havre, France were found guilty by a court for their involvement in a violent attack on a teenage girl, a criminal act they streamed live on social media earlier this year. The teenagers, aged 15 to 16, were charged with group violence, making death threats, and distributing pornographic images of minors.
The court concluded that the attack, streamed on social media, was perpetrated by the group of teenagers, showing the victim partially nude. The closed hearing, lasting nearly 10 hours, resulted in all five teens being found guilty. The lawyer for one of the defendants, Elisa Haussetete, stated that the group nature of the attack exacerbated the violence and acted as the driving force behind it.
“All five have expressed sincere regret,” she said, adding that they will not be appealing the verdict. Sentencing for the perpetrators is scheduled for hearings in September, with four of them remaining under judicial supervision in the Seine-Maritime region, and one being held at a closed educational center. Additionally, they are all prohibited from contacting the victim or her family.
In a separate incident, some of the teens had been accused of assaulting another 14-year-old girl the day before the attack on the teenage victim. Former French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had announced a plan in September 2023 to address the issue of bullying in schools, following a series of suicides by schoolchildren who were harassed online. As part of the plan, then Education Minister Gabriel Attal declared that combatting school harassment was an “absolute priority”.
The prevalence of online attacks is concerning, as only six percent of victims report such incidents to the authorities, according to a 2022 report from the French interior ministry. The case of the assault on the teenage girl sheds light on the serious issue of online harassment and the challenges in holding perpetrators accountable.