A 26-year-old man under a deportation order was sentenced to just one year in prison after being found guilty of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl in an elevator earlier this summer.
The incident took place on July 16th and saw the man enter an elevator in a residential building in the commune of Elbeuf in the Normandy region and attack the 11-year-old young girl after she entered the elevator with him.
According to the girl, who was visiting her family in the area at the time, the man asked to look at her phone and asked her what social media apps she used and told her she could join him in the home of the person who hosts him in France, news website Actu reports.
In court, the young girl explained, “He then stroked my breasts and buttocks before taking out his genitals to make me touch it and lick my cheek,” and said the man pushed all of the elevator buttons but she was able to escape to her grandparents’ apartment on the 10th floor of the building.
In his defence, the migrant attempted to claim the young girl had sexually assaulted him, claiming “she touched my sex, in my religion, it is forbidden to touch a woman, I have never touched any woman!”
A lawyer for the victim and her mother noted that the man was already under a deportation order to leave France, noting that “if this measure had been executed, my client would never have been assaulted, she will keep this trauma for life!”
Similar arguments were made earlier this year in Austria following the rape and murder of 13-year-old girl Leonie in Vienna after it was revealed that several of the Afghan migrants suspected of causing her death had been handed deportation orders years prior, but they were never enforced.
Ultimately, the court in Rouen sided with the 11-year-old victim but only sentenced the 26-year-old migrant to a year in prison, a fine of €7,000, and a requirement that he would be deported and banned from re-entering France for three years.
Countries across Europe have seen migrants under deportation orders commit various crimes as factors like the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban have made it harder to deport foreign nationals back to their home countries.
Some migrants have even taken to refusing coronavirus tests in order to avoid deportation, though in France remaining in the country after being ordered to leave is a criminal offence in itself.
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