France jails three in gang rape case after mother saves evidence

The mother's actions helped lead to the conviction late Wednesday in a country where only a fraction of women file a police report after a sexual assault, and most of these cases never make it to court.

The teenager was living in western France but visiting the Paris region in March 2020 when she said she was abandoned by friends in a room in the suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne.

She told investigators eight men -- most wearing balaclavas -- hit her, and several raped her while the others looked on laughing, before a blow to the neck knocked her unconscious.

The young woman told her mother of the attack, but was not ready to speak to police, so the parent stored away her leggings and underwear in a plastic bag, to preserve possible DNA evidence on them.

When she filed a complaint a year later, in April 2021, investigators were able to identify genetic traces of four people on the clothes.

A juvenile court in the Paris suburb of Creteil late Wednesday said it had sentenced two of the men, who were 15 years old at the time, to 10 years in jail. Another was handed six years behind bars for complicity, while three others will be tried at a later date.

Only seven percent of women in France file a legal complaint after a sexual assault, attempted rape or rape, according to government figures.

Six out of 10 cases are then deemed not strong enough to go to court, a figure that rises to seven out of 10 cases when the victim is a minor, according to a government report in November.