This Thursday, after a year of investigation, the French daily Liberation published the testimonies of eight young women. All very young at the time of the events, they relate the same experience: the videographer with 12 million subscribers seems to use his notoriety and emotional blackmail to obtain sexual relations, through a pattern of influence.
In 2020, it was a Quebec fan, Maggie Desmarais, who was the first to denounce Norman’s actions in an Instagram post in the wake of #Balancetonyoutubeur, launched by a tweet from Squeezie, another Youtube pundit.
YouTubers (including those who shout from the rooftops that they are feminists) who take advantage of the psychological vulnerability of young subscribers to obtain sex, we see you ????
The truth always ends up coming out ????— Squeezie (@xSqueeZie) August 6, 2018
The exchanges between the Quebec fan and Norman began in 2017 via Snapchat. The comedian, 30 years old at the time, asks the 16-year-old girl to send him more and more daring photos, which she ends up accepting in the face of emotional blackmail from her idol. “It was beyond my limits and he knew it very well. But when I met his expectations, it was never extreme enough for him. At first I was not comfortable in a bra, then I ended up completely naked […] It was always more inappropriate”, she remembers. “I had to send him a striptease on Snapchat and he saved it to the chat. It made me uncomfortable, because I saw the video every time we spoke. I asked him several times to delete it, he never did”. she says. It was after a rabbit posed by the Youtubeur, visiting Quebec in 2018, that Maggie Desmarais stopped this virtual relationship.
When the #balancetonyoutubeur scandal arises, she assures that Norman comes back to her to ask her not to talk about it. Then the young woman ends up filing a complaint. During his police custody, the Youtubeur allegedly claimed, according to information revealed by TF1, to be the victim of a plot orchestrated by Maggie Desmarais.
”A well-established scheme”
Louise met Norman during a signing session in 2015. Exchanges followed via social networks. “The fact that you are younger, I like it too”, he writes in particular to the 18-year-old girl, according to Liberation. Some months later, a meeting takes place in the Parisian apartment of Norman Thavaud. “I had no choice. I realized that I had been a victim of rape when I went out with someone else and that I was still traumatized by what had happened to me”, explains Louise. She is not the only one, each time the stories are similar.
In 2010, Zoé was 16 when she met the rising figure of the web at a convention. Norman gives her his number. A well-established scheme according to her “since he had prepared several papers with his telephone number before my arrival”. After exchanges by messages and persuasive remarks, the young girl returns to Paris to see him in “a maid’s room, which was not his main accommodation”. The Youtubeur then uses guilt-inducing behavior to obtain a sexual relationship: “You don’t really love me, I wonder why I made you come to Paris, you took me for an idiot”. Zoé explains that she was then “stunned”.
“Even when I didn’t feel like it, he forced me”
Same thing with another young girl in 2018, who recounts her evening spent with the videographer in a hotel. “He also had some very dirty remarks, which I cannot repeat six years later. I wanted it to end quickly (…) I didn’t want to, but he had played so much with my psychology… I had integrated the fact that if I didn’t do what he wanted, it was over. So I accepted”. The just-adult girl explains that she was unable to leave the hotel. “He belittled me by telling me that the age difference was a barrier. He was like, ‘I thought you were a woman, but you’re obviously a kid’.”
Alexandra also recounts a toxic relationship of several months. Norman would have arrested her in a Parisian nightclub in 2016. She was then 18 years old and he was 28. If all goes well at first, the relationship ends up being suffocating for the young woman. “Even when I didn’t feel like it, he forced me. […] It was emotional blackmail. At the time, I was young and in love. I didn’t do it out of desire but out of obligation, because he was threatening to leave me. I was looking at the ceiling waiting for it to pass”, she testifies. Alexandra hopes today “that it disappears from the Internet” and expects a lot from the investigation : “These few months were enough to ruin part of my life”.
Four of the eight testimonies relayed by Liberation are now in the hands of the Paris Family Protection Brigade.