The interrogation of Norman Thavaud, French YouTube star with 12 million subscribers, who is accused of raping and corrupting a minor, was extended on Tuesday morning, the Paris prosecutor’s office said at the request of AFP.
• Also read: YouTuber Norman arrested for rape and corruption of minors
The moderator of the “Norman macht Videos” channel was taken into police custody on Monday as part of an investigation by the youth protection brigade (BPM), which opened in January 2022. Six young women filed a complaint against the Youtuber.
According to the Liberation newspaper, five of them would accuse Norman Thavaud of raping them and two were underage at the time of the crime.
In 2020, a Quebec fan, Maggie D., publicly accused Norman Thavaud of manipulating her to obtain sexual photos and videos when she was 16 at the time.
She said she filed a complaint in Canada.
As part of a Quebec-French investigation published by Urbania media in April 2021, other women had made similar allegations against the YouTuber over facts that allegedly happened when some were minors.
Questioned by AFP, Maggie D. confirmed that she was in France to face Norman Thavaud before investigators this Tuesday, according to Liberation.
Norman, the third French YouTuber in terms of number of subscribers, is a veteran who made his debut on the platform in 2011. According to an official count, his videos have been viewed more than 2.7 billion times.
Standard-bearer of a new generation of comedians born on social media, this trained editor rose to prominence in the early 2010s with sequences inspired by his daily life (“Having a cat”, “The toilets”) or video games (” Luigi clash Mario”).
With his passion for stand-up, he was on stage for two solo shows between 2015 and 2020, in addition to a few appearances in cinema (“Mon roi”) and on television (“Ten Percent”).
In 2018, French YouTuber number one Squeezie (17.6 million subscribers) took to Twitter to denounce “Youtoubers (including those who yell from the rooftops that they are feminists) who exploit the psychological vulnerability of young subscribers to promote sex to get”.
His tweet was widely shared as part of the #balancetonyoutubeur movement. Some testimonies had targeted Norman.