A 26-year-old man should be brought before the judicial court in Sens, Yonne, on Wednesday March 24 for harassing and threatening to kill several young girls via Instagram, France Bleu revealed.
An investigation was entrusted to the gendarmerie of Sens and the man is currently in police custody.
Read also: The worrying explosion of online harassment
The public prosecutor of Sens, Arnaud Laraize, told
Le Figaro
that fourteen people have lodged a complaint.
The man, store manager in Sens, was arrested for "
malicious calls or telephone messages, repeated death threats and identity theft
".
False accounts and death threats
Since September 2020, the young man has regularly harassed his victims exclusively on the social network Instagram.
His process was always the same: after creating a fake profile, he bombarded young girls with messages and, as soon as the harassed person blocked him, he opened a new account, sometimes impersonating male profiles.
"
Most of the messages are of a sexual nature, but insults and death threats are also recurrent,
" said the prosecution.
The man also exercised physical surveillance on some of his victims.
“
Two of the people who lodged a complaint were followed at their workplace.
This was observed following damage found on the front of the store where they worked: insulting messages which corresponded to those that the victims received online were identified,
”explains the prosecutor.
Read also: Twitter to test ways to limit online harassment
Most of the victims are students or high school girls in their twenties, and all live in the vicinity of Sens.
The man, unknown to justice, was the subject of a psychiatric expertise, the conclusions of which are not yet known.
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