Videos posted to French social media showing a young migrant beating and harassing underage French girls have ignited a furious outrage.
The videos circulating Snapchat show a migrant from Boussy-Saint-Antoine, a Paris commune, surrounding adolescent French girls with his friends before hitting them.
An investigation from the Evry-Courcouronnes public prosecutor’s office was opened on Wednesday to look into the dissemination of these viral videos.
The first video shows the aggressor harass a young girl outside a fast food restaurant.
In the second, the filmed girl is pinned against a wall and kicked. Falling backwards, the caption reads: “she wanted more b (I believe he means ‘bite’–French slang for penis)… she’s already filled up.”
The third video, with the caption, “I will explain to you the story: they went to the restaurant, he didn’t want to pay and she gave the waiter her address,” shows the migrant boy strike the girl twice.
Throughout the videos, the boys are heard to be laughing.
Prosecutors believe that the girls in the videos are girlfriends of the boys involved.
According to a rough translation, Le Parisien reports:
In a first sequence, the alleged perpetrator of the violence seems to molest a young girl in front of a fast-food restaurant. In a second, filmed from afar, the miner presses a teenage girl against the wall and then kicks her. She suddenly falls backwards. The video is accompanied by the legend: “This one she wanted more b … she took full pot (sic!)”, Corroborating the hypothesis according to which the victims are the girlfriends of their aggressor.
Finally, in a third sequence and with another young girl, the group is on a RER platform. The same suspect, from the front, sharply slaps the victim twice in front of his friends. This time, another legend claims to explain the scene: “Jvou explains the story they are going to the restaurant he did not want to pay her to give her address to the waiter (sic!)”. Those who film laugh behind their smartphones.
A source close to the investigation has signaled that the 17-year-old boy responsible has been identified.
The boy is known to police and has already been booked for a violence-related offense.
As the videos have causes much outrage, police have urged social media users to refrain from sharing the footage.
The mayor, Romain Colas, lauded the anonymous tip off to the authorities, revealing the perpetrator’s identity.
