Eight testimonies from young women claiming to be victims of Norman Thavaud are now known, Friday, December 9, 2022. The day before, the lawyer for Maggie Desmarais, the first to have filed a complaint against the videographer, explained that the youtubeur would have “exerted on her a form of control”.
Despite his release without charges against him, Tuesday, December 6, 2022, after 36 hours in police custody, Norman Thavaud is still the subject of an investigation for corruption of minors and rape, which has been entrusted to the Brigade for the protection of minors (BPM). Six complaints have been filed against the star youtuber, including five for rape. In total, eight testimonies of young women claiming to be victims of Norman Thavaud have been made public. The first is that of Maggie Desmarais, who is the only plaintiff to have testified openly. She told her story in April 2021 to the Canadian site Urbania.
The young woman, whose complaint prompted the five other complainants to come forward, indicated that the facts would have taken place in 2017 or 2018, for nine months, when she was 16 and Norman Thavaud was in the process. era 30. After the first virtual exchanges, the young woman from Quebec indicated that the youtubeur would have managed to extract photos and videos of a sexual nature from her during a “little unhealthy game of emotional attachment”, indicates- her in her testimony published in Urbania. The complaint filed by Maggie Desmarais prompted the other five plaintiffs to go to court. Among these five people, two claim to have been minors at the time of the events and, according to Releasethey could all have suffered a rape with the exception of Maggie Desmarais.
During Norman Thavaud’s police custody at the start of the week, the young Quebecer was able to deliver her version of the facts in front of the youtubeur, during a confrontation organized between Norman Thavaud and four complainants. If Maggie Desmarais did not expand on the exchanges that took place, her lawyer spoke on BFM TV, Thursday, December 8. Me Clément Pialoux said that Norman “used his notoriety and the influence he had over her to demand that she send him photos and videos of an obscene nature”. According to the lawyer, Norman Thavaud “knew that she was a minor” during their exchanges. Me Clément Pialoux also affirmed that “a relationship has developed between them during which he has exercised a form of influence over her”. “Doing what she did under duress is a form of suffering,” he said, adding that “if she decided to make all this public, it is to give strength to her word and that other victims of these behaviors know that it is possible to be heard”.
Would Norman Thavaud have had a hold on his potential victims?
The eight testimonies of young women claiming to have been victims of Norman Thavaud paint the portrait of a star youtuber who, aware of his notoriety, would have used it to obtain sexual images and sexual relations. Several young women indeed indicate that they would have had sexual relations with Norman Thavaud without consent or instigated by constraint. In their testimonies, they indicate that they were pushed to have these relations with the youtubeur according to a similar pattern. They claim that they would have first rejected the videographer’s attempts, then that the latter would have sought to make them feel guilty by considering that these refusals showed a form of “immaturity” in them. Norman Thavaud would then, according to them, insisted on obtaining the desired sexual intercourse.
In his testimony published in the media Urbania in April 2021, Maggie Desmarais indicates that Norman Thavaud would have threatened several times to put an end to their conversations, in order to obtain what the young woman affirms that he wanted from her, namely videos and photos of a sexual nature. “That’s also what made me cling. And when I started to walk away, he caught up with me with his tender little words and his unhealthy little game of emotional attachment. I was young, I admired him , I easily fell into the trap, “she said in her testimony to the Quebec media.
If Norman Thavaud remains innocent for the moment in the investigation for corruption of minors and rape which targets him, the testimonies which continue to be revealed in recent days could give new elements to the investigators and to the Paris prosecutor’s office, which must decide to the continuation of the case. The assertions of the various young women have in any case already had consequences on the activity of the videographer, since the production company Webedia, responsible for the largest French YouTube channels, announced to suspend its collaboration with him on December 5, after the revelations of Release in his custody.