Frenchwoman Fabricated Tale of Attack, Police Report

[Kadie]

Frenchwoman Fabricated Tale of Attack, Police Report
By ARIANE BERNARD

Published: July 14, 2004


ARIS, July 13 - A woman who provoked a national wellspring of outrage and sympathy when she reported being accosted at knifepoint in an anti-Semitic attack on a commuter train has confessed to making up the story, the police said Tuesday. Her report of the attack, after a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents around France, caused President Jacques Chirac to vow to do everything "to find the authors of this shameful act'' and led to fiery newspaper editorials and a call for a mass protest against anti-Semitism and racism, which was supposed to take place here on Monday.

But when the police could not verify her harrowing story, they brought her in for further questioning and, they said, she then confessed to the fabrication.

The woman, Marie Leblanc, 23, reported Friday that a group of six men attacked her on a suburban train north of Paris after they mistakenly identified her as a Jew. She said the attackers slashed her clothing with knives, lightly wounding her in the process, and drew three swastikas on her stomach with a marker. Before the group got off the train, she reported, the assailants overturned the stroller of her 13-month-old child, who fell to the ground.

But video surveillance cameras on the train platform where the attackers supposedly left the train did not record the presence of any group meeting their description, and their hot line received no calls for help, the police said. They also established that Ms. Leblanc has a history of filing complaints for assaults that were never confirmed.

more... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/europe/14fran.html

[JSJ]

1. I've followed this story...

...and it turns out she is a very troubled woman, indeed.

[akitamata]

2. "troubled indeed..."

Miss LeBlanc (Miss White) staged and anti-Semitic hate crime to drum up sympathy for the Jews? At the expense of North Africans, and Muslims. Miss LeBlanc has shown us where the real hatred in France is to be found. Shame on her and may she be helped to see the folly of her ways. Mouche.

[JSJ]

3. sorry, I thought she had a history of such histrionics

But, I just read that there was a boyfriend who helped her write the stuff on her. Mossad?

[Swamp Rat]

4. When I saw that thread first appear here, about this incident,

like many others I suspected it was a fairytale. It was interesting though, to see folks arguing over it.

[IndianaGreen]

5. A lot of the AIPAC-types got a lot of mileage from this story

just as they did when a French rabbi claimed that he was assaulted by Islamic youths in Paris, only to admit later that he fabricated the entire story.