YouTuber Norman Thavaud was released after 36 hours in police custody and the confrontation with four complainants. No charges have been brought against him but the investigation for rape and corruption of minors continues.
[Mis à jour le 7 décembre 2022 à 12h] If Norman Thavaud is not worried, the case continues. The French youtubeur was released on Tuesday, December 6, 2022, after 36 hours in police custody. No indictment was pronounced at the end of the hearing but the Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM) is continuing the investigation initiated in January for corruption of minors and rape by the Paris prosecutor’s office, which must decide on the follow-up. of the case. The 35-year-old videographer is accused by six women, five of whom refer to acts of rape and two add that they were a minor at the time of the events. Charges refuted by the respondent who denied any constraints and said he was “weakened” by this case which has been dragging on since 2020.
Norman Thavaud’s statements during police custody are the first of the youtubeur concerning the facts of which he has been accused since 2018 in the form of rumor and since 2020 after the complaint filed by Maggie Desmarais, one of the potential victims. The youtubeur better known as “Norman makes videos” was also confronted with four of his accusers during his hearing learned France info, including the young Quebecer who is none other than the first plaintiff to come forward and testify publicly. In her story Maggie Desmarais says she followed the videographer carefully between 2017 and 2018 and exchanged messages with him for nine months. Over the course of the discussions, certain exchanges would have slipped, turning to requests of a sexual nature, in particular the sending of photos and videos, according to the young woman. Facts also reported by the other complainants.
Before the investigators Norman Thavaud delivered a completely different version of the facts presenting Maggie Desmarais as a fan who had become intrusive without there being any ambiguity during their conversations. The continuation of the investigations must make it possible to disentangle the true from the false and the investigators could also be interested in the testimonies of the other complainants, several of whom report similar ways of doing things in their relationship with “Norman makes videos” and the behavior of the thirties. Presumed innocent, the youtubeur is not safe from being questioned again or indicted. The case has already had consequences on the activity of Norman Thavaud who saw his collaboration with the production company Webedia, responsible for the most important French YouTube channels, suspended from December 5 after the revelations of Release on the custody of the defendant.
Following the information published today, the Webedia group announces the suspension of its collaboration with the youtubeur Norman Thavaud.
— webedia (@WebediaFR) December 5, 2022
What is Norman Thavaud accused of?
Several teenage girls and young women claim to have been victims of Norman Thavaud, now 35 years old. They accuse him of facts “of a different nature”, specifies Release. The case concerns in particular a young fan from Quebec who, then aged 16 at the time of the events, accused Norman Thavaud in 2020 of having managed to extract sexual photos and videos from her during a “little game unhealthy emotional attachment”. In addition, five other people were questioned in this context, including two minors at the time of the events. Release claims that they could all have been raped with the exception of the young Quebecer, named Maggie Desmarais, who must, for her part, be confronted with the youtubeur on Tuesday.
“I do not expect much from justice, it would not be the first time that an attacker would be acquitted”, confided in 2021 Maggie Desmarais to the Quebec magazine Urbania. And to add: “I know that there are flaws in the judicial system. But I still filed a complaint, on principle. And then I want Norman to finally assume what he did.”
What is the testimony of Maggie Desmarais?
In the Norman Thavaud case, only the public testimony of Maggie Desmarais, which prompted the other five plaintiffs to come forward, is known. In April 2021, the Quebecer told her story to the Canadian site Urbania. The facts would have taken place in 2017 or 2018, for nine months: only the age of Norman Thavaud at that time (30 years old) was indicated, making it possible to determine the chronology of the facts. Maggie Desmarais had explained that she had exchanged simple messages with the youtubeur before the “virtual relationship”, as she had specified, turned “quickly into flirtation”. “Very shortly after our first exchanges, he started to compliment me. Little by little, the photos we sent each other were more and more daring. It was from there that it became problematic and that he was more and more insistent and demanding”, she explained, referring to manipulation: “He used the right words at the right times: as soon as I walked away, he caught up with me at the last moment. I was ready to cut off all communication with him, he was coming back to the charge. In her remarks, Maggie Desmarais argues that Norman Thavaud “just wanted [qu’ils s’envoient] nudes [photo partiellement ou intégralement dénudée de soi, ndlr.] on Snapchat”.
After realizing the “unhealthy” nature of her relationship with Norman Thavaud, Maggie Desmarais expanded on certain parts of her story on the Instagram social network. The profile of the young woman also contains several archived and highlighted publications which retrace her affair. It was only after that the young woman and potential victim granted a river interview to Urbania.
Tuesday, December 6, at the end of the day, while Norman Thavaud was still in police custody, TF1 News revealed what the famous YouTuber allegedly told investigators during the first hours of his interrogation. Claiming to be “weakened” by this whole affair, Norman Thavaud would have particularly poured out on Maggie Desmarais. “Maggie has a problem with me that does not date from yesterday”, he would have posed in the preamble, affirming that the young Quebecer “has always made a fixation on [lui]”.
According to Norman Thavaud, Maggie Desmarais would have contacted him in 2017 by Snapchat. The exchanges would have lasted “a year”. Claiming to have initially found her “nice”, he would have confided that she would have gradually “started a form of seduction”. And to admit: “I got a little carried away.” But very quickly, the young woman would have become too “intrusive” for her taste. “She is starting to become oppressive, she writes me crazy things like: ‘I love you'”, he would have explained, before reporting having discovered that the young woman at the time had an Instagram account entirely dedicated to him on which were no less than 98 poems, all in his honor. “Everything was attested by a bailiff. Since then, the poems have been deleted. She deleted everything that did not go in her direction”, would have still indicated Norman Thavaud.
It is finally shortly after his arrival in Canada, during which they will never meet a priori, that he would have decided to put an end to their exchanges. “I found her really fragile and unstable. So I decided, in a long benevolent message on Snapchat, to tell her that we don’t[était] not on the same wavelength, that I was not interested”, he would have explained, adding: “She thought that we were going to make our life together. After that, I stopped talking to him. I moved on and haven’t tried to get in touch with her since.”
If Norman Thavaud confided, more generally during his interrogation, “never” to have “asked for nudes”, Maggie Desmarais affirming the opposite, he however conceded that he had already had in the past with young women “seduction”, the YouTubeur then speaking of “people with whom there was a feeling”. Norman Thavaud would have finally assured that he was not aware, at the material time, that Maggie Desmarais was a minor.
Are the rape charges against Norman Thavaud characterized?
If Maggie Desmarais’ account never mentions any sexual assault, Release indicates that the five other potential victims questioned by justice in the context of this case could have been victims of rape. However, nothing in the file at this stage confirms that such actions took place. Especially since no rape is mentioned in the two other testimonies collected by Urbania.
In addition to that of Maggie Desmarais, the Quebec site obtained two stories from young women who implicate Norman Thavaud. But no physical evidence exists, the messages written on Snapchat not registering. They had explained that they were 16 years old at the time of the exchanges with the youtubeur. One explains that she started the conversation with the respondent by talking about pets. “And it started to drift,” she said, indicating requests for photos from the thirties. “He was the first to send me a shirtless photo and he sent me, ‘And now you’re sending me the same one,'” she said. A message, as often, accompanied by a “don’t worry, I’m kidding”. But the young girl was explaining to Urbania to be executed, appearing partially naked. Before receiving further requests. “Ah but it would have been better without the bra, and without the jeans too, and then without the panties”, such would have been the messages received later, according to her words.
“It was very unhealthy,” commented another witness toUrbania. “I was 16. I think he snapped his head at me and I was like, ‘Oh, you haven’t tanned.’ He said to me: ‘Ah yeah, you don’t like me?'”, she said. The young girl ensured that she had not fallen into the trap. “So there, I answer him: ‘But you’re 30 years old on the other hand…’ Because I’m starting to realize that it’s weird that he answers me that.” The exchanges would then have turned short: “I felt that his remarks were ambiguous and that it was flirting. I said to him: ‘We will talk to each other when I am of age.’ And then he said something like, ‘I’m hesitating to delete you all of a sudden.'”
Was Norman Thavaud already under suspicion?
The custody of the videographer “Norman makes videos” comes in December, a year after the start of legal proceedings initiated in January 2022 by the Paris prosecutor’s office. However, the case goes back further. The first complaint was filed by Maggie Desmarais in Canada in 2020 but the transfer of the procedure considerably delayed the judicial work, the complaints of the five other complainants took place during the year 2021. But, as of 2018 the name of Norman Thavaud had been mentioned during the wave #BalanceTonYoutubeur which had swept over social networks. Lucas Hauchaud alias Squeezie on the networks and the first French youtubeur then published on Twitter: “The youtubers (including those who shout from the rooftops that they are feminists) who take advantage of the psychological vulnerability of young subscribers to obtain sexual relations we see you. The truth always ends up coming out.”
At the same time Norman Thavaud was talking with Maggie Desmarais and in her testimony the Quebecer shared a message that the videographer would have sent her: “Do not talk too much about our history, it could seem ambiguous, with everything that is happening. “