A 13-year-old French girl woke up in the middle of the night in her own bed in the French city of Riom only to discover an intruder who had broken into the house and proceeded to viciously sexually assault her. The man, 27-year-old Fahd Kabbaj, who fled to Morocco after the heinous assault, has now been convicted for the crime that happened six years ago.
On April 23, the court in Clermont-Ferrand sentenced him to five years in prison and issued an international arrest warrant, as the man remains on the run.
The incident began on June 29, 2020, at approximately 3:00 a.m, when Kabbaj snuck into the family home when he saw the door unlocked. He crept up to the sleeping girl’s bed and began to grope her in her sleep, waking her. He grabbed her chest and hips, forced himself on top of her to kiss her, and gripped her hand and placed it on his erect penis. He then tried to insert his fingers into her vagina, and when she resisted, he slapped her, reported French news outlet La Montagne.
The 13-year-old victim, in total shock, managed to grab her phone and begin filming her attacker. She then warned Kabbaj that her father was coming, causing the man to flee in fear. During the encounter, he managed to obtain her private details and even sent her a message the next day on social media.
However, the 13-year-old girl had already gone to the police. She then provided the video and the message to officers, which were used to identify the pedophile rapist. Kabbaj disappeared in Paris and is believed to have fled to Morocco.
It has now been six years since the attempted rape of the girl, who is now 19, and she testified in court: “I no longer feel safe anywhere.”
She said she suffers from various psychological disorders due to the complete stranger appearing in her room and sexually assaulting her. She has trouble sleeping, does not feel comfortable being intimate with other people, suffers from permanent insecurity, and has dealt with school absenteeism due to her condition.
If Kabbaj is ever found and extradited to France, he will serve five years in prison automatically. He was also ordered to compensate the victim and her family, and will be registered as a sexual offender. He will also be banned from staying in Puy-de-Dôme for five years.
Remarkably, the same news outlet that covered his trial, La Montagne, also wrote about Kabbaj before the sexual assault, when he was 16, in a puff piece celebrating his desire to be a filmmaker and covering his two short films.
“His first video, titled The Metamorphosis, had been viewed nearly 600 times on Youtube. The short ten-minute film traces the adventure of George and Samsa, two friends with opposite personalities, who exchange bodies following the spread of a virus,” wrote the paper.
“The young director and screenwriter is self-taught and manages his entire project alone: Thanks to the evolution of technologies, shooting a film is now within everyone’s reach. You just have to have a lot of imagination,” the paper continued.
La Montagne also described Kabbaj as “talented and motivated” and stated he wanted to study film in Paris and become a screenwriter. The paper noted that the moral of his Metamorphosis was “that we cannot change the world, but we can change our world.”
While he may not have amounted to much of a director or filmmaker during his life, he certainly “changed the world” for one 13-year-old victim, with catastrophic consequences.
