When It Happens to You: Getting Mugged in Paris
We all know someone who has had their things stolen: a phone, a wallet, a purse. I'd heard those stories, but after a year living in Paris and not so much as a failed pick-pocketing attempt, I forgot that Paris is a city where those things could happen to me.
I had just finished a business class at 6:15 p.m. I could not have known that 30 minutes later I would become the victim of physical assault and attempted theft. My backpack full with my laptop and notebooks, I left to go home. On a typical day, I take Bus 92 home to my apartment which is located in the area between the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood and Montparnasse. But, this particular Thursday, I decided I'd walk home since the electronic sign at the bus stop said that the bus wouldn't arrive for another 11 minutes. The weather was nice and I figured I should take advantage of the fresh air and daylight by walking home; it only takes 35 minutes.
Image Credit: Google Maps/Anonymous
I put in my earphones and headed toward home. I passed École Militaire and on Rue de Babylone, still in the seventh arrondissement, I saw two girls ahead of me, walking in the same direction. I estimated they were eighteen years old. One had long, blue braids and the other was overweight. Just before the street's intersection at Rue Vaneau, the older of the two, the one with blue hair, turned around and asked in French to borrow my phone.
Uneasy, I took out my earphones and shoved them in my pocket. I replied in French, "Who are you calling?" I didn't hand over my phone but kept it in my hand. "Oh, I'll do it," the girl said, snatching it before I could object. At exactly 6:45 p.m. she dialed a phone number, hung it up, and then redialed it. I later saw that the call was canceled immediately and she had never had the intention to call anyone.
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As she spoke into my phone, she began rounding the corner onto Rue Vaneau. I called after her and walked with the two girls. I told her she could use my phone but that she had to stay put. When I repeated that she had to stop walking, her large friend interposed herself between me and the girl with my phone. She blocked my path with her arms and I told her to stop touching me, to which she replied that I was the one touching her. We argued but I kept advancing. I then started yelling that I wanted my phone back. The girl with blue hair had kept walking but turned to face me when I ducked under the big girl's arms and finally caught up to her. "Hey," I shouted, "I want that back right now!" She looked at me, annoyed. "What's your problem, huh? Can't you see I'm on the phone?"
It was daylight still and several people on the sidewalk and sitting at a nearby cafe had stopped what they were doing to watch the scene unfold. I raised my voice louder and the big girl tugged at my arm. I shrugged her off of me and demanded, "Give me my phone. I did something nice for you, but I want it back right now." The blue-haired girl took the phone from her ear and replied angrily. "Do you want me to smash your phone?" she asked, twice pretending to throw it to the ground. "Go on like this, and I'll smash it!" Without thinking, I started screaming at her to do it and swore at her. "Fais-le! Vas-y! Mais, putain, fais-le! Allez!"
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She paused, likely having expected me to beg her not to throw it. I went into auto-drive. I lunged and successfully wrenched the phone from her hand. The big girl who had stayed behind me until that point grabbed me and hit me in the face. Unprepared for violence, I tried stepping away from the two girls, but before I could move, the blue-haired girl's nails raked my scalp and she closed on a big section of my hair. She used her free hand to strike me, slapping my face, punching my forehead. The fight happened so quickly that I don't know who hit me where, but I know I was punched multiple times on my arms and my head. One of the girls kicked at my legs and kneed me on the right side of my abdomen.
For the duration of the attack, I could hardly feel the blows. I felt a sting with the first slap, but shock and adrenaline kept me from physical pain. I'm 168 centimeters tall and I weigh 52 kilograms. I seem like an easy target. While there were openings for me to hit the blue-haired girl, I feared that if I hurt one of the girls that they would both hit me harder; it wasn't worth provoking them. I held my own, not by striking back, but by protecting my face and my phone and by keeping on my feet until one final push. With the shove, I fell to my knees and the pair ran away.
I remember that after falling, I looked up and locked eyes with a middle-aged woman about three meters from me. She stared straight at me and then crossed the street. An old man in the doorway of his restaurant looked me in the face, but he turned away, too, and went inside. I rose. I began crying so hard I couldn't speak. I didn't know the number for the police, just the one for the firefighters. I felt helpless, like some pitiful, starving dog that nobody would give a scrap of food. A man came jogging around the corner and between breaths I asked him what the number for the police was. It's 17.
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He placed the call for me. By the time the police arrived and made an initial report, I was still hyperventilating too much to speak. Even though I wasn't bleeding or in much pain, it was hard to process what had happened; I went from minding my business to on the ground in a matter of three minutes. I gave my report. I showed the police my ID. I gave the police my phone number and my address. The two police officers drove me home.
I called the university's emergency hotline which I had saved in my phone at freshman orientation, but it's also on the back of AUP student ID cards. I was instructed to call a friend to come be with me. Then I called the line again and made plans to go to Student Services and to the police headquarters the next morning. Two of my friends came to my house and I had begun to feel better when I noticed a missed call at 10:11 p.m. and a voicemail message. When my friends and I listened to the message, we understood that a police officer was calling me to tell me they had stopped two girls who matched the description I had given the police earlier. He wanted me to come immediately to the police station near Invalides.
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My two friends and I were amazed. Did they really catch them? How? I called an Uber and we all rode to the station.
We got to the station and I saw the blue-haired girl and her friend handcuffed to a bench. We were ushered past them and into a back room where the officer who had called me explained that a 17-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl had also filed reports against the girls on the bench. I learned later that there was a fourth girl, another minor, that they had mugged, too. The girls had carried out four muggings in a time span of two hours in the same neighborhood, a neighborhood which also happens to house the French prime minister. After learning this, I was no longer surprised that they had been caught.
I gave a full account of the events leading up to my presence in the commissariat that evening and I identified the girls on the bench. I was surprised that they were just sitting there. I wasn't scared of them, I knew there was nothing they could do at that point, but one of the minors was terrified. She had told them that she didn't have a phone and they had beaten her up just for fun. I finally got home after 1:00 a.m. Friday morning. I slept the best I could and when I woke up, I got ready and then went to Student Services. They informed the professor whose midterm I was supposed to be taking that I wouldn't be in attendance. We scheduled a doctor's appointment. The police said a doctor's note would be useful if the girls were to be prosecuted. So I went and my doctor wrote a certificate, noting the bruises on my arms and legs, a crescent-shaped nail mark on my hand, and a mark on my forehead.
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The note proved itself useful Monday afternoon when I was called by a state-appointed lawyer I didn't even know I had. She told me to come to the Palais du Justice at Porte de Clichy. I showed up and the trial had already started. I was told the younger attacker was a minor and had already been processed. I will likely never know what happened to her. The girl with blue hair, though, was present and I sat straight across from her. The judges asked me to give a testimony so I read from the printed police report I had made the evening of the attack and gave them my doctor's note. Although I was entitled to an interpreter, I was never given one. I am glad that I speak mostly fluent French; I cannot imagine how stressful and confusing it would be to stand before a panel and my attacker and not understand most of what was being said.
I stayed for the judges' deliberation period and the girl's sentencing. She was given two months of jail time, four months probation, and a sursis of six months, meaning that if she is sentenced to jail time again within a certain time frame, she will automatically have six months added to her sentence. I was relieved to know that she'll be made to see a psychologist regularly. Then, the judges issued restraining orders so that she cannot come near me or any of the other three victims. She owes me and another girl several hundred Euros, but I don't want that money and I suspect I'll never receive it. I imagine the judges awarded that to us more as a matter of principle than anything else.
The biggest takeaway, I've decided, is that I shouldn't have gone for my phone. Yes, I would've been angry that my phone was stolen, but I wouldn't still be anxious if they hadn't beaten me up. It's been two weeks since I was attacked but I'm still not behaving how I normally would have when I'm on the street. I keep my phone away, I look around constantly, and I'm much jumpier. I realize now that you don't have to be alone or on a dark street to be mugged. You can be walking in daylight, surrounded by people, and practically on the prime minister's doorstep but still be attacked. Before, I also wouldn't have expected that kind of violence from girls. I used to feel safer walking late at night if I was near another woman or group of women. Now, I don't even have that. But it is better to be aware than to still have the false sense of security I had had.
Physically, I'm alright. I do have my possessions. I'm thankful I know how to react the next time I sense danger: I'll give my stuff to whoever is threatening me. It isn't worth a struggle. I know that I could've bought a new phone, but today I can't purchase the sense of safety I used to feel. Now I can only wait for it to grow back.
