French YouTuber Norman Thavaud has been in police custody since Monday as part of an investigation for corruption of a minor and rape. He is the subject of six complaints, sometimes from women who are minors at the time of the facts denounced.
Norman Thavaud, a French YouTuber with 12 million subscribers, was taken into police custody on Monday as part of an investigation for corruption of a minor and rape. The first accusations against him, however, emerged several years ago.
• Police custody after six complaints
Norman Thavaud’s custody began on Monday and was extended on Tuesday morning. The host of the “Norman makes videos” channel was taken into police custody as part of a preliminary investigation entrusted to the Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM), opened in January 2022.
Six young women have filed a complaint against the youtubeur. Five of them accuse Norman Thavaud of rape, learned BFMTV from a Source close to the investigation, confirming information from Release. Confrontations must take place between the 35-year-old man and the complainants.
Corruption of a minor, which is the other offense investigated by the BPM in the context of this case, consists of an adult imposing on a minor, possibly via the Internet, “words, acts, scenes or images that may pushing him to adopt a degrading sexual attitude or behavior (for example, having sex in front of a minor)”, explains the official website of the French administration.
• His name quoted on balancetonyoutubeur
Norman Thavaud had already been the subject of testimonies denouncing his behavior with girls and women. In 2018, the number one French youtubeur, Squeezie – Lucas Hauchard of his real name – had denounced on Twitter “the YouTubers (including those who shout from all the rooftops that they are feminists) who take advantage of the psychological vulnerability of young subscribers to get sex.”
His tweet had been widely rebroadcast as part of the balancetonyoutubeur movement and some testimonies had targeted Norman. In the wake of this movement, several girls, often minors at the time of the events recounted, had denounced the actions of certain influencers against them, citing in particular virtual exchanges of a sexual nature and facts that could be qualified as sexual harassment.
• Exchanges of photos of a sexual nature
One of these testimonies is published in 2020, on Instagram, by a young Canadian named Maggie D. The young woman accuses Norman of having incited her to send him photos of her of a sexual nature when she was not only 16 years old, and he is 30. In April 2021, a Quebec-French survey published by the Urbania media shared his story.
“I trusted Norman at the time,” Maggie D. explains in the article.
“I believe that the relationship of trust that is created, even before you speak with your favorite Youtuber, is already there because you see him at home in his videos. You feel like you know him, and that is a good person,” she continued.
In the video that accompanies its investigation, Urbania says Norman’s publicist told the outlet he didn’t want to answer her questions and refuted “all these accusations.” Maggie D. was summoned by the Brigade for the protection of minors as part of the French procedure targeting the youtubeur. She must be confronted this Tuesday with Norman Thavaud.
• Discarded by Webedia, YouTube internal investigation
In the wake of the announcement of his custody, the Webedia group (AlloCiné, PurePeople, 750g, Jeuxvideo.com…), who works with many web stars, announced on Twitter on Monday “the suspension of his collaboration” with Norman Thavaud.
For its part, YouTube, the network where Norman has the most subscribers after having made his debut there in 2011, is currently conducting an internal investigation, a spokesperson for the platform told Tech&Co, confirming information from Mediapart.
“For behavior outside our platform, we strongly advise victims to report to the competent police or judicial authorities,” we explain to Tech&Co.
“If we find that a creator’s behavior, on or off YouTube, is harming our users, our community, our employees, or our ecosystem, then we take additional steps to protect them.”
The social network can in particular remove the monetization of certain videos or remove them from its recommendations to reduce their visibility. But the criteria for these sanctions are not officially established in its regulations.
Third French YouTuber in number of subscribers, Norman is the symbol of a generation of influencers who took off in the early 2010s. His notoriety exploded thanks to his format of “podcasts”, sequences inspired by everyday life.
He took to the stage for two solo stand-up shows between 2015 and 2020, in addition to a few appearances in film (“Mon roi”) and on television (“Ten percent”). In recent years, its success on the Internet however appears to be losing momentumhis latest videos peaking at four million views, where they could exceed ten million previously.
