Girl injured ten years ago in Gaza war presented as victim of sodomy

The girl shown in the photograph has no connection with sodomy whatsoever. The girl was a victim of the war in Gaza and suffered an artillery barrage in 2014. She had a broken skull and a fractured nose, due to which bruises around the eyes appeared. The story about little Nema was reported by British Mirror and Channel 4, and the video recordings were made in 2014 and 2015 

 

We are fact-checking a post on Facebook sharing a photograph of children with visible facial injuries around the eyes claiming the following: 

Look after your children!!! 

The photograph with the children is accompanied by the following text: 

“Panda eyes” appear when the child is sodomized and when the trauma raptures the capillaries around its eyes (which bulge when sodomized) thereby creating bruises in the form of rings. 

Our fact-check shows that the photograph has no connection whatsoever with sodomized children as the post claims. Namely, the girl first shown in the photograph is Nema from Gaza, and the media reported about her in 2014 and 2015. She suffered an explosion that caused injuries around her eyes. 

As reported by British Mirror on the 28th of July 2014, the journalist Jon Snow from Channel 4 recorded a video about children victims of the war in Gaza, including a two-year-old girl at the time with facial bruises “so bad that she looked like a panda”.

One particularly disturbing image is of Nema, who at just two years old has bruises around her eyes so severe she looks like a panda. She was reportedly blown up in an Israeli artillery barrage last week. Snow said: “I can’t get her out of my mind. Two-year-old Nema. Her broken skull and fractured nose have imposed two vast round suppurating panda-sized blobs effectively closing her tiny eyes, reported the Mirror in the 2014 article.

The video showing the two-year-old girl with panda eyes is also available on YouTube (at the 2:15 timestamp). 

A year after, in July 2015, the reporter Jon Snow went to Gaza again to see Nema. The video from his visit can also be found on YouTube (at the 2:45 timestamp). 

Mirror wrote about the girl then, i.e., covered Snow’s story. 

One year on from the Gaza crisis, a girl who suffered bruising so bad it made her look like a panda is unrecognizable. One year on the presenter has returned to Gaza to be reunited with Nema, whose wounds appear to have completely healed. Now she looks happy and healthy, though she does appear to have suffered some side effects from her traumatic ordeal, reported the Mirror. 

In the video of the meeting between Snow and little Nema, the reporter says the following: 

Her horribly bruised panda eyes were impossible to forget. Today, we found her again, now safely in her father’s arms, her eyes recovered. But now she twitches a little and wets the bed at night. 

All this leads to the conclusion that the girl in the photograph has no connection whatsoever with sodomy. The girl was a victim of the war in Gaza and suffered an artillery barrage. She had a broken skull and fractured nose, due to which bruises around the eyes appeared. The story of Little Nema was reported by the British Mirror and Channel 4, with video recordings from 2014 and 2015. Therefore, the post fact-checked is assessed as untrue. 

 

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