General panic on Facebook. At the Kiabi in Albertville, in Savoie, a child was allegedly kidnapped from the shelves of the store. “A mother had her child in the stroller, she turned around for a moment, no more kids. The managers closed the doors and searched the store, ”says a publication seen nearly a million times over the last 24 hours. Before adding: “The little one was in a fitting room with three men of Romanian origin, they were changing the little one’s clothes and were shaving his hair”.
Another publication reported the same story, adding the detail this time that the store concerned was that of Albertville. But the post has since been deleted. It is also not specified when this story took place. But did it even take place? 20 minutes checked.
FAKE OFF
“This information is totally fanciful,” said Didier Marin, the divisional commander of the Departmental Directorate of Public Security (DDSP) in Savoie. An element confirmed by the manager of the Kiabi store in Alfortville on Facebook this Monday evening: “The information circulating on social networks in relation to a child kidnapped in the Albertville store is false”.
This is actually a decades old rumor. On social networks, recurrently, publications mention stories of kidnappings in stores. Sometimes the signs change, sometimes only the location differentiates them. Bayonne, Ancenis, Exincourt… examples abound. But the principle is the same: to play on the fear of young parents with no doubt a background of xenophobia targeting a specific population. Here, the Romanians.
A Rumor of Orleans 2.0
It is also difficult not to see a link with the rumor of Orleans, considered today as one of the greatest urban legends. We are in 1969 and in Orléans, first rumors circulate on the fact that young girls would be kidnapped in the fitting rooms of several stores. They would be locked in cellars or pricked to be put to sleep. What do the shops concerned have in common? They would all be held by Jews and sent to prostitution networks. It would even be an entire network of “white slavery”.
On the archives of the time, there is no doubt that this belief had some followers. “They will try on shoes and they give them injections on their feet”, we hear for example on a video from the National Audiovisual Institute (INA). Crowds are even organized in front of the stores deploying numerous threats and insults. The case is no longer just a rumor, but now takes the form of anti-Semitism. However, investigations by the local media and the police did not report any real disappearances. A story fantasized and poisoned by word of mouth, like kidnapping alerts on social networks.