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Tuesday, April 24 11:41 PM SGT
Teenage gang-rape ritual plagues French suburbs
PARIS, April 24 (AFP) -
The trial this week in Paris of 11 young men accused of gang-raping a 14-year-old girl seven years ago has cast light on a ritual that sociologists say is a disturbing phenomenon in France's suburbs, often poor and with a high immigrant population.
Dubbed a "tournante" -- or "take-your-turn" -- the practice consists of a teenage boy seducing a girl, then offering her up to the sexual gratification of his friends, and in some quarters has almost attained the status of a rite of passage, experts say.
Apart from the Paris trial, judicial investigations into "tournantes" are under way in Strasbourg, Besancon and Cergy, and Education Minister Jack Lang has ordered a committee of enquiry into the "state of male-female relationships in schools."
The case of Sabrina, the 14 year-old rape victim, is typical.
In October 1993, she had consensual sex with her 19-year-old boyfriend Osmane in a cellar in a high-rise estate in northern Paris, and was then turned over by him to 14 of his friends, all aged between 15 and 20, who raped her.
Unusually, she decided to lodge a complaint with the police, but as a result she was submitted to a second gang-rape nearly a year later, for which the 11 accused are currently standing trial.
According to Sylvie Lotteau, a magistrate in the northern Paris suburb of Bobigny, the practise of "tournante" was first identified in the late 1980s among gangs of immigrant teenagers from the poor "banlieues" around the French capital.
"Their technique was to pick up a young girl -- a white girl -- and once she had become the girlfriend of one of the members, he would allow his mates to make use of her," she said.
The extent of the phenomenon is hard to assess, mainly because victims are reluctant to admit to what happened for fear of being labelled promiscuous -- or of reprisals against their families -- while the perpetrators often fail to see the harm in what they have done.
"Their image of the girl is entirely negative," Lotteau said. "Often she'll be a runaway from a broken home, and they find it easy to claim that of course she agreed to have sex with them."
"It is the group effect. They can't let themselves down in front of their friends, who are urging them to commit the act. Individually, they would not carry out the rape," said a police commander in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of northern Paris, who did not wish to be identified.
Sociologists have linked the practice to the climate of machismo and aggression prevalent among teenagers in poor estates, disintegrating family life, and an indulgence towards male behaviour common in North African immigrant communities.
"Usually, the boy is allowed everything. Everything is forgiven. There's nothing to say sorry for. Anything that happens to a girl, though -- that's her fault. She wanted it," Jeanne Sillam, deputy director of a school in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, told Le Monde newspaper.
Public acknowledgement of the practice of "tournantes" is growing thanks to the court cases -- and also to the release in November of the film "La Squale", which looked at the issue -- and the authorities hope a taboo is gradually being broken.
Lang told a conference at the UN educational agency UNESCO last month that he was "profoundly shocked by reports speaking of an unheard-of violence and sexual contempt towards girls in some schools."
His committee on male-female relations is to report in May, and is expected to recommend a network of support groups and advisers for girls to turn to.
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