SALMON, Idaho — An Idaho prosecutor said on Wednesday that internet outlets devoted to carrying anti-Muslim sentiments were to blame for fomenting widely spread, false rumors that three Syrian refugee boys had gang-raped a young girl at knife-point.
“There was no gang rape, there were no Syrians involved and there was no knife. None of it is true,” Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said of the reports, which originated on blogs and social media postings and have since gone viral.
He told Reuters those reports stemmed from an incident on June 2 in which three boys – aged 7, 10 and 14 – were accused of assaulting a 5-year-old girl in an apartment house laundry room in the southern Idaho city of Twin Falls.
