Nina and Stephanie – not their real names – said that for years they were too scared to speak out about what they allege were months of almost daily gang rapes when they were 15 and 16, growing up on rundown estates in Fontenay-sous-Bois outside Paris. In 2005, Nina was left unconscious by one final brutal beating following years of abuse and told a female police officer. What followed was a trial that has shaken the country as it struggles to deal with a spate of gang rapes of teenage girls by youths on estates across France.
The alleged Fontenay-sous-Bois attacks took place between 1999 and 2001. Nina, now 29, told the newspaper Libération she had moved to the housing estate aged seven with her mother and brother after a divorce. She was described as good at school and a tomboy. One night returning from the cinema, aged 16 and a virgin, she said, she was grabbed by a local group of youths, taken to basement cellars in the flats, raped and subjected to a series of brutal sex attacks by scores of local boys. The extremely violent, prolonged attacks by large groups of boys continued daily, in car parks, stairwells, apartments, cellars and the empty playground of a local nursery school. She said there would be "at least 25" youths present during attacks in which she screamed, protested, cried and vomited. One witness described 50 boys "queuing" to attack her.
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