Maggie Desmarais is a young Quebecer behind the complaints against Norman Thavaud. She brings numerous charges against the youtubeur, who defended himself while in police custody.
[Mis à jour le 7 décembre 2022 à 9h08] She is the one who accused first, and publicly, Norman Thavaud, the one who started the case. Maggie Desmarais, a Quebecer in her twenties, was in France, this Tuesday, December 6, 2022, in the premises of the Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM), in Paris. She had to be confronted with the famous French youtubeur who, she says, would have asked her for intimate photos a few years ago, at a time when she was still a minor. Came expressly from Canada for the occasion, according to information from Release, the young woman continues her fight against the thirties whom she accuses of having exerted a psychological influence on her, through messages exchanged on the Snapchat application. But, on Tuesday, Norman Thavaud emerged free from police custody, the BPM simply explaining that it was continuing its investigation. A decision taken after, in particular, listening to the defense of the youtubeur who responded to the accusations, as revealed TF1 news. However, nothing has filtered, at this stage, on the content of the confrontation that was to take place between the complainant and the respondent.
Who is Maggie Desmarais, accuser of Norman Thavaud?
Maggie Desmarais had alerted to the situation on July 8, 2020 via her Instagram account. This young Quebec woman, 16 years old when she says she was a victim of the videographer, had thus described herself as a “fan” of the youtubeur at the time. The latter, then 30 years old, would have, according to his version, abused the situation to obtain “photos and videos of a sexual nature, sent by Snapchat, and exerted a psychological influence in 2018”. The young woman had decided to file a complaint in the summer of 2020 in Canada for “child luring” and “sexual exploitation of a minor”, the equivalent in France of filing a complaint for corruption of a minor, revealed the Montreal media Urbania.
In April 2021, in an interview given to this Quebec site, she returned to her complaint. “I do not expect much from justice, it would not be the first time that an attacker would be acquitted,” she said. “I know that there are flaws in the legal system. But I still filed a complaint, out of principle. And then, I want Norman to finally assume what he has done”, she confided again, before to return to his virtual relationship with the youtuber.
“I believe that the relationship of trust that is created, even before you speak with your favorite youtubeur, is already there because you see him at home in his videos, you have the impression of knowing him, and that is a good person. I think that’s why I trusted him almost blindly,” she explained.
Were intimate photos requested?
Maggie Desmarais had indicated that the youtubeur was “insistent” before “becoming more and more demanding” in their exchanges. The virtual relationship lasted nine months, added the young woman. Urbania declared, for his part, to have obtained evidence that the youtubeur had requested intimate photos of Maggie Desmarais, but that the latter would also have sent them. Norman Thavaud had admitted to the media having spoken with the teenager, but had refuted the other accusations.
A version that he would have maintained before the investigators of the BPM, Tuesday, December 6. “I never asked for nudes”, he defended himself, recognizing however “the seduction with people with whom there was a good feeling”, according to TF1 info. With Maggie Desmarais, the exchanges would have started in 2017 according to Norman, who indicated that “Maggie contacts me and I answer nicely, without any ambiguity.” Before adding: “After a while, we found each other nice. She started a form of seduction. I got carried away a little.” In her interview with Urbania, the complainant also assured, for her part, to have “fallen into the trap”.
And if the young woman declared in her interview that “little by little, the photos that we sent each other became more and more daring; it was from there that it became problematic and that it was more and more insistent and demanding”, Norman, him, delivered an opposite version to the investigators: “The more it went, the more I had the feeling that she was becoming intrusive in my life. She begins to become oppressive, she m write crazy things like ‘I love you'”.
On Instagram, testimonials against Norman… and an account bearing his image?
Maggie Desmarais did not wait for the media to accuse Norman Thavaud of having had inappropriate behavior or words and of having manipulated her. On his instagram profile, the young Quebecer has archived all her posts concerning the videographer accused of corruption of minors and rape in a file put forward and entitled “NORMAN”. The complainant explains in these publications that she recorded some of the messages and photos sent by the youtuber and publishes some of them as evidence in the hope of silencing her critics. The Quebecer adds that she has other “evidence […] compromising” but “too explicit to be shared” and which she prefers to reserve for the police or the investigators in charge of the case.
On the social network, Maggie Desmarais also informed her subscribers of her complaint and published some of the testimonies of other young people evoking and sometimes complaining about the same videographer. Over several months, the young woman has fueled this file by speaking out on the subject.
For Norman Thavaud, “everything she does against me is very orchestrated”, adding that the complainant had opened another Instagram account on which she had published “98 poems” exclusively dedicated to her person. “Everything was attested by a bailiff. Since then, the poems have been deleted. She deleted everything that did not go along with her,” he said. For Norman, “she’s always had a fix on me. She says she doesn’t want to ruin my life, but that’s what she’s been doing every week for three years now.”