Like many a school truant, the 13-year-old girl was keen to prevent her father from discovering she had been suspended because of repeatedly failing to turn up for lessons. So she made up a story. The teenager said her history teacher, Samuel Paty, had instructed Muslim students to leave the classroom so he could show the rest “a photograph of the Prophet naked”. It must have seemed a harmless enough lie, but it sparked a chain of events that led to unimaginable horror.
Ten days later, the teacher was dead – decapitated by a Islamist terrorist. Paty’s family were left devastated, France traumatised and the girl and her father facing criminal charges… On Sunday, Le Parisien revealed that the girl, known only as Z, had admitted that she had wrongly accused Paty.
This was previously discussed here, but that thread is closed:
Yes, and I wouldn’t describe this horrific crime as occurring “all because” a teenager lied. It occurred “all because” a murderous fanatical terrorist considered himself entitled to slaughter somebody for what he considered a blasphemous act.
The thirteen-year-old truant was wrong to tell that lie, but she is not to blame for the murder. That responsibility is squarely on the murderer.
I would suppose that the murderer, Anzorov, is in prison at this point. He should consider himself lucky that the French have ceased deploying the guillotine.
I do not know what type of punishment is appropriate for the girl.
Reminds me of the tragic story of a Pennsylvania teen who falsely accused her neighbor man of rape because her mother had caught her watching porn and refused to accept that a normal girl would watch porn and believed she must have been sexually assaulted in order to be interested in sex. The guy spent years in prison before being freed.
According to the OP’s link, the teacher in the context of discussing the Charlie Hebdo murders showed his students one of the Muhammad caricatures, telling Muslim students in advance that if they might find it shocking they could close their eyes or stand in the corridor so as not to see it. The student in question wasn’t even present in that class because she had been suspended for truancy.
So to cover up the truth of her suspension, the student told her father that the caricature had shown the Prophet naked and that he’d requested the Muslim students to leave while it was shown, and that the teacher suspended her for arguing with him about it.
Her father posted angrily on social media, and complained to the school and the police, that the teacher should be fired for discrimination and for showing a pornographic image. And those social media complaints attracted the attention of a murderous terrorist in an entirely different region of France, who traveled to the school and murdered the teacher.
Misrepresenting a teacher’s conduct to get oneself out of trouble is definitely a punishable act, but ISTM that neither the lying schoolgirl nor her angry father had any intention at all of causing or encouraging the teacher’s murder.
The appropriate punishment for the student is easy: She deserved to fail her classes and get kicked out of the school. Which I’m pretty sure she already got.
It seems to me that her father might be more culpable (though still far less so than the actual murderer): Did France at the time have any laws against cyberstalking or similar?
AIUI, it was supposed to explain away the suspension as “I bravely resisted the teacher’s insensitive discriminatory action and he contemptibly retaliated by suspending me!” rather than the more awkward factually accurate version of “I’ve been skipping school and they found out and suspended me”.
Presumably the father was officially notified by the school of the suspension itself, but not of the specific cause of it.
I have a hard time blaming the father for believing their child was telling the truth, especially if we assume what @Kimstu said.
I agree that the child is not responsible for the murder. However, I do think it is a lesson in how lies can be dangerous. The actual killer was someone who believed that lie.
The unintended consequences of lying are one of the reasons I try not to do it.
I mean, that’s obviously not true in every circumstance, and there’s plenty of constitutional and military precedent otherwise, but if you narrow the statement–planning and carrying out a murder over an alleged religious insult has no justification–it’s accurate.
Exactly. She’s kind of an asshole, but she’s not responsible for the murder. Look at it this way, had they said that it was a naked would anything have happened beyond that girl potentially getting busted for lying and truancy?
It’s totally on the Islamist nut for murdering the teacher.
I have no problem believing that the father was incredibly stupid and gullible for buying such a ridiculous lie. Does the story even sound plausible in the least little bit?
When a police officer shoots someone who with their speech plausibly threatens to commit incipient violence, they are found not to have violated the first amendment rights of the shot victim.
