A story picked up by conspiracy blogs and some conservative media outlets that Syrian migrants gang-raped a 5-year-old Idaho girl at knifepoint was embellished to incite anti-refugee sentiments, authorities say.
“There were no Syrians involved, there was no knife involved, there was no gang-rape,” Twin Falls County prosecutor Grant Loebs said Monday morning, the Twin Falls Times-News reported.
The rumor was that a group of Syrian refugees raped a mentally disabled girl at knifepoint June 2 in the laundry facilities of Fawnbrook Apartments, a low-income housing complex in Twin Falls.
An incident did occur, Mr. Loebs said, and two juveniles were charged after authorities obtained a video recorded with a cellphone, the Times-News reported.
Law enforcement clarified Monday that the boys — ages 7, 10, and 14 — are from Sudan and Iraq, not from Syria; they did not have a knife; their status as refugees and Muslims has not been confirmed; and the suspected assault was not a gang rape, the New York Daily News reported.
Only one of the boys is alleged to have touched the victim, the prosecutor said.
Mr. Loebs said he suspects the embellished reports are the work of the local anti-refugee movement.
“There is a small group of people in Twin Falls County whose life goal is to eliminate refugees, and thus far they have not been constrained by the truth,” he said. “They have not been constrained by the truth in the past, and I don’t expect them to be constrained by the truth in the future.”
Only a handful of people from Syria live in Twin Falls County, and no Syrians have been settled there through Idaho refugee programs, said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees.
“There have been periodic website postings about hundreds of Syrians coming to Idaho that have all proven to be false in the past, and this is probably just one of those attempts to try and stir up hatred and bigotry,” he told the Times-News.
World Net Daily, a conservative news website, interviewed Jolene Payne, a Fawnbrook Apartments resident who allegedly witnessed the incident. She said she found the 5-year-old girl naked with the two younger boys, who were also naked, as the oldest boy filmed.
“The worst thing was the way they peed all over her clothes and on her too, and I thought that was one of the meanest things I’ve ever saw done,” Ms. Payne said. “And we know those kids must know a lot more than the kids in America of that age. I’ve never seen any of them do anything like that to little girls, and we have a lot of children around here.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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