Police in the Polish city of Legnica have detained a local woman suspected of assaulting minors from Ukraine, the municipal police press office reported on 22 July.
“Officers quickly identified the woman suspected of attacking three minors and gathered evidence. Today, the woman was arrested and taken to the district prosecutor’s office in Legnica,” the police stated.
The 26-year-old suspect has been charged with causing moderate or minor bodily harm and discrimination. If convicted, she faces up to 7.5 years’ imprisonment.
The press office added that the court has placed the suspect “under police supervision” and prohibited her from approaching the victims or the playground where the incident took place.
Chief Inspector Yagoda Ekert of the Legnica Police Headquarters reported that the prosecutor had also charged the woman with “coercing another person, through violence or unlawful threats, to perform a specific act, refraining from an action, or to tolerate a specific action, due to the hooliganistic nature of the act’.”
Polish media report, citing the mother of two teenagers, that on 18 July the suspect reprimanded her children for speaking Ukrainian. The woman harassed the children on several occasions and eventually struck one of the woman’s daughters, who gave evidence, as well as another girl and a boy who stood up for them.
According to the victim’s mother, the suspect told the children she had done this because they were from Ukraine. The local newspaper *Fakt* quotes Liliana Lukasiewicz, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor’s office, as saying that the detainee admitted to attacking the children but denied any xenophobic motives.
Earlier this month, Polish law enforcement officers detained a man who had verbally abused Ukrainian children on public transport; these children had been granted temporary protection in Poland due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.