Czech Police reveal yet another false allegation of an attack by Romani people

Detectives in Tanvald have determined that an alleged assault on a 15-year-old girl who supposedly was mugged by three Romani men there actually never happened. The girl has said her initial story given to police was untrue. Czech Police spokesperson Ludmila Knopová informed the Czech Press Agency today that the case has been shelved.

The mugging supposedly took place on the morning of Tuesday, 24 April. The Jablonecký daily quoted a source close to police as reporting that three youths had attacked the girl, one supposedly pushing her down a hill into a park where two others were waiting. They reportedly told her to give them her mobile phone and her money or she would be punched with brass knuckles. When the girl said she had neither a mobile phone nor money on her, one assailant allegedly responded by given her a harsh blow to the abdomen. The girl claimed she had managed to escape her assailants and had run out to the main road, where she called for help. She was transported to hospital.

Shortly after the incident was first reported, the Czech Press Agency released a news item about the assault identifying the (non-existent) assailants as Romani. The headline was “Romani people attack schoolgirl in Tanvald, boy in Olomouc”.

Police officers in Liberec investigated a similar case in April. A 15-year-old girl there originally told officers that she had been stopped on Na Bídě street on the morning of 19 April by three strange men who wanted her to give them food or money. When she had nothing to give them, she claimed they dragged her inside a prefabricated apartment building and searched her, after which they used a razor to inflict cuts all over her body before fleeing. TV NOVA reported that her would-be assailants were Romani. Officers then determined the girl had made up the story of the robbery and had inflicted the wounds on herself. Her desperate act was committed in response to a bad situation in her own family.