Harassed online, beaten and drowned: death of 14-year-old girl shocks France

The murder of a teenage girl who was beaten and thrown into the Seine river by two classmates in a Paris suburb shocked France and reopened the debate on the phenomenon of youth violence and bullying.

The Body of 14-year-old Alisha was found in the Seine River, at the height of Argenteuil, a suburb north of Paris, on Monday night, with marks of violence.

The two suspects, a boy and a 15-year-old girl, who have a romantic relationship and were classmates of the victim, were charged Wednesday night with murder and face 20 years in prison.

The death of the young woman, which was the front page of several newspapers, was condemned by the French government. “What happened to this young woman is terrible and vile,” Executive spokesman Gabriel Attal said Wednesday.

“Harassment took her away, a vicious circle that contributed to this drama,” he added, and affirmed that the guilty will be punished.

This death also put on the table the problem of youth gangs in France, after several very violent confrontations between teenagers in recent months, especially in and around Paris.

“We cannot accept the trivialization of violence,” said Attal, who explained the need for a” faster and more effective criminal response for minors.”

Ambush

According to the first elements of the investigation revealed to the press on Wednesday night by the Pontoise prosecutor, Eric Corbaux, Alisha was killed in an ambush under a highway overpass near Paris.

In this place away from the gaze, the young woman would have been brutally beaten and then thrown into the river, still conscious.

The relationship between the trio, who was in the same school in their third year of high school, “three friends at the beginning”, had deteriorated in recent weeks, between love affairs and “trivia” of teenagers, according to Corbaux.

The two suspects had been temporarily expelled from their vocational school for harassing the victim.

Alisha’s phone had been hacked and pictures of her in her underwear were posted on Snapchat.

This episode was compounded by a fight between the two girls on the school grounds and the anger of the young man against Alisha, who according to him, “had spoken ill of his late father.”

It was “such trivia that would have justified the desire to do something to the victim,” Corbaux said.

The two defendants were due to appear before a disciplinary council on Tuesday, the day after the tragedy.

During questioning, the two teens “did not express immediate regret,” Corbaux said.

“We are talking about young people who are barely 15 years old”, he said, before adding: “We are not talking about something totally rational.”

A march will be held in Argenteuil on Sunday in memory of Alisha, according to the mayor of this city of 110,000 inhabitants.

The march will begin at the Cognacq-Jay school, where the three young people were students, and will end on the banks of the Seine.