Italian officials are decrying an alleged rape by seven Egyptian migrants of a 13-year-old Italian girl in Sicily. The young girl’s boyfriend was reportedly forced to watch as two of the migrants assaulted her. 

“I beg you, I beg you, don’t hurt me, let me go,” the girl, who has not been identified, said as she was being attacked according to Giornale di Sicilia, a local newspaper. She was allegedly attacked in a public restroom at the seaside town of Catania on the southeastern coast of the island. 

According to the local paper, the girl had to identify her attackers in a line-up at a local police station, where she identified two of the men but did not point out any others, saying she had not seen their faces and “did not want to accuse the innocent.”

A member of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, Matilde Siracusano, said that rape and violence such as this is bound to happen with the sheer level of immigration Italy has seen in recent years.

“Stories of this type are inexorably repeated throughout the country,” Ms. Siracusano told Nova. “Group sexual violence, abuse of the weakest, subjugation of women, who are increasingly smaller and more defenseless. We expect those responsible for this atrocity — all already identified — to pay for what they have committed. There are no justifications for what happened, a fury of this type on the part of children, even minors, cannot be imagined.”

The deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, said on X that the migrants should not only be deported, but punished in the most creative way possible.

“Don’t come and talk to me about ‘tolerance’ or ‘error,’” Mr. Salvini, who leads the League party in parliament, wrote on X. “In the face of horrors like this there can be no clemency but only one cure: chemical castration. I hope that the proposal presented by the League will be voted on as soon as possible.”