A White German teenage girl was brutally tortured on video by teenagers, who beat the victim, set her hair on fire, and put out cigarettes on her face.
A video of the incident is spreading across social media, with users reacting with shock to its content. However, a longer version of the video has been made available to German television channel RTL, which states the longer version is far more harrowing and includes the teenagers setting the girl’s hair on fire and putting lit cigarettes out on her.
The girl, who is White, is targeted by girls who appear to have a foreign background. One Black girl is also seen in the background, but it is unclear if she participated in the assault.
“Everyone knows that nothing will happen to them because they are so young, but my daughter will never forget it for the rest of her life,” said the mother of the victim in an interview with Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung. “When I saw the video, I collapsed. Everyone had fun tormenting my daughter. These are sadists.”
According to the victim’s mother, the shorter version of the video does not show the full extent of the torture her daughter was subjected to. In the longer video, the group of girls forced the victim to strip down to her T-shirt, and according to police spokeswoman Astrid Heidorn, she was also robbed of her cell phone.
Warning. Upsetting.
In the video, the girls tell the German girl to close her eyes each time before punching her in the face and slapping her. The girl hysterically cries in response. One of the girls spits on her, telling her, “Close your sh*t eyes.” Although there is no footage of the girl being stubbed with lit cigarettes in the shorter clip that has been made publically available, one of the aggressors asks where her cigarettes are as the victim weeps in front of her.
The incident reportedly took place on Feb. 21 in Heide, located in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and comes shortly after the murder of a 12-year-old Luise in Freudenberg, who was stabbed to death by two girls the same age.
Up to a dozen girls may have participated in the latest attack, but even those already identified may face no criminal responsibility. They are between the ages of 12 and 17. Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of the Interior Sabine Sütterlin-Waack said: “Three perpetrators have been identified, but two of them are under the age of criminal responsibility.”
In Germany, any perpetrator under the age of 14 cannot be held criminally liable, which means the murderers of the 12-year-old victim will face no legal consequences whatsoever, a law that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is seeking to change in order to hold young perpetrators accountable for serious crimes.
“I want the perpetrators to be punished harshly and fairly. The law needs to be tightened,” said the mother.
The victim and her tormentors appear to have known each other before the incident.
Apparently, a witness was passing by the scene, and the victim was forced to tell that person that she was merely “lovesick” and the other girls were there to take care of her. However, another witness eventually stepped in and stopped the violence.
“He realized the danger my daughter was in and took her away when she asked for help. We are very grateful to him,” the victim’s mother told the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung. The perpetrators fled the scene when a police vehicle arrived.
Even weeks after the attack, the woman’s daughter is now in a clinic where doctors are taking care of her. She says she decided to go public with the case now because she wants to raise awareness about violence among young people. She says she also wants to encourage other parents to report similar acts.
