The girl was lured into an apartment by a 26-year-old after she ran away from home last week
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A 14-year-old French girl who was kidnapped, beaten and gang-raped by two men who kept her locked in a flat has finally been rescued.
The GPS on her Snapchat allowed her to be tracked down by police officers in Marseille.
The girl was lured into the apartment by a 26-year-old who offered to host her after she ran away from home last week.
She was reportedly forced to smoke cannabis by the suspect as he and a 64-year-old man allegedly took turns raping her.
The captured girl was able to send messages to her parents via Instagram while her captors were sleeping.
Her parents were in turn able to alert French authorities to the kidnapping.
Officers were able to trace the 14-year-old's location via Snapchat GPS to the residence in the Cabucelle district of Marseille.
She was found by police and rescued on Friday evening.
The two men were arrested and charged in Marseille's prosecutor office on Sunday with kidnapping and rape of a minor, but the pair have maintained that the sex was consensual.
The teen was taken to hospital due to being in a state of shock, and she told police that she was forced to give oral sex. She later returned home to her family.
She was asked to turn on her location on Snapchat in order to allow the police to track her down.
She stayed in touch with police via messaging apps as they closed in on the apartment.
The police knocked on each of the doors in the apartment until they found the right one, which they were able to confirm by having the girl message the word 'yes,' once they knocked on the door of the flat she was in.
One of the suspects was seen trying to delete evidence on his phone as the police entered.
The victim was taken to hospital for emergency treatment, as she was found under the influence of drugs.
Local media report that medical examinations found she had 'anal lesions.'
A policewoman Information and Command Centre in Marseille has been praised for coming up with the idea of using Snapchat to track down the victim.
Department Secretary of the Alliance union in the Bouches-du-Rhône region, Rudy Manna, said: "This rescue took place thanks to Snapchat, but above all took place thanks to the excellent idea of the young assistant policewoman from the Information and Command Center (CIC), without whom nothing would have been possible".
He added: "Snapchat alone would not have allowed the arrest of these individuals".
