France: Raped Catholic Schoolgirl Expelled for Breaking Curfew

Outrage was sparked in France as teenage girl was expelled from school after being raped during an overseas trip with her class.

Management at the Catholic school Notre-Dame de la Providence, in the village of Thionville, north-eastern France, said the 15-year-old broke the institute's rules by drinking and leaving her room the night she was assaulted.

The school's lawyer also suggested she was partially to blame for being assaulted.

The girl, whose name is not reported for legal reasons, was sexually abused in a Berlin hostel, where she was staying with classmates during a school trip in May, according to local media.

The teenager left her room with two girlfriends to meet up with several Polish young men who were staying in the same hostel.

The boys lured the teenagers into drinking vodka and then raped of at least one of them, RMC radio reported.

Two days later, the girls told teachers about the sexual assault and filed a complaint with Berlin police.

However upon returning in France the three teenagers were summoned before the school's disciplinary board and expelled.

Notre-Dame de la Providence head teacher Françoise Lallier told Republicain Lorrain newspaper the girls had been punished for "not respecting the curfew and for landing themselves in the room of four adult men, and for consuming alcohol."

"There was an excessive consumption of alcohol which led to inappropriate conduct," the school's lawyer, Hervé Renoux, told Le Parisien.

Family and lawyer of the abused girl denounced the private school's sanction as "incomprehensible and disproportionate", saying the teenager was punished twice.

"The girl was a victim of something that is going to trouble and traumatise her in the future and on top of that she feels guilty because the expulsion implies she did something wrong," said lawyer Frédéric Richard-Maupillier.

"If there had been no assault, I'm not sure that these students, who went out past 10pm, would have been subjected to a disciplinary hearing."

The family has filed a complaint to have the teenager readmitted to school.