Normandy, France – A woman in her seventies has been raped by an intruder who broke into her home, Friday morning, in the Mare Rouge neighborhood of Atlantic coastal city, Le Havre, local media are reporting.
After stealing a small amount of cash, the perpetrator proceeded to rape his elderly victim, reportedly stating that he was acting in the name of Islam before fleeing the scene.
The terrorized victim is said to have raised the alarm having sought refuge with her sister-in-law after the attack. Police are actively searching for the suspect, according to the Paris Normandie newspaper. At least one media outlet is reporting the man to be of North African extraction and his victim to be 72 years of age.
The attack reveals a worrying trend in France – the increasing invocation of Islam during violent criminal acts, as seen in various under-reported crimes, such as the murder of a Jewish woman in Paris in April and in daily acts of violence which rarely make it beyond local media. Most French news sources are reporting Friday’s crime without reference to the attacker’s invocation of Islam.
Where the subject cannot be avoided, French media are quick to blame ‘psychiatric problems’ as the cause for such incidents, leading to suggestions of the need to establish a national ‘Psychiatric Hospital of Allah Akbar’ by satirists on the right.
The country has not escaped the type of attacks committed by migrants in Germany, Austria and Sweden. In January, a 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an Afghan asylum-seeker in the Southern French town of Montélimar.
Montélimar, ‘Gateway to Provence’, known as a rest stop for holidaying French families en route to the Mediterranean, was one of hundreds of communities across the country to have received migrants last year, resettled from the former illegal encampment at Calais.
In November 2016, an Ivory Coast national was charged with the rape of a young woman in Bordeaux. The woman was held hostage with a machete during the ordeal.
Also in November, a 67-year-old woman was sexually assaulted at Arzon in rural Brittany. The crime – committed by a Sudanese minor – drew criticism of the French government’s migrant policy and provoked a protest in the town in which tear gas was used by police to prevent angry protestors from entering a migrant accommodation complex. Later, it emerged that the asylum seeker in question had also sexually assaulted an underage girl in the same town.
With President Macron likely to continue his predecessor’s migrant policy, or worse – to emulate Angela Merkel’s example, frustration is growing among patriotic French citizens, increasing numbers of whom are arming themselves insofar as possible. Talk of civil war is not uncommon, and is even seen as an inevitability in many quarters.
Meanwhile those unable to defend themselves, such as the unfortunate victim of Friday’s crime, are finding themselves in an increasingly vulnerable position – having to tolerate the brutal consequences of France’s catastrophic immigration policy.
