The alleged facts date back to December 2022. Five people appear this Monday in Paris for insults and death threats against the comic book author Bastien Vivès, targeted by an investigation for the distribution of child pornography images.
“I will have your skin” or “death penalty for paedos”, they notably declared on social networks.
Tried by the Paris criminal court, the five defendants face up to three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.
In December 2022, in the run-up to the Angoulême international comics festival which takes place each year at the end of January, an exhibition dedicated to the cartoonist Bastien Vivès sparked controversy due to several works by Bastien Vivès, accused of promoting pedophilia .
The exhibition “In the eyes of Bastien Vivès” was finally canceled in mid-December after multiple “threats” made against the designer on social networks.
Also physical threats
According to a source close to the case, one of the defendants is notably being prosecuted for having sent to the comic book author, from his Instagram account, an image of a Kalashnikov accompanied by the words “cure for pedophilia” (in French remedy against pedophilia ).
The defendants are also accused of threats of physical harm, made on this same social network but also on X (formerly Twitter), in crude and violent language, as well as insults targeting the sexual orientation of the author, according to this same source.
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“It is always so distressing what these practices express: the appetite for stoning of certain human beings who have read nothing and who do not know what they are talking about,” declared the lawyer of Bastien Vivès and the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, Me Richard Malka, calling for “necessary criminal repression”.
“I think the facts are indisputable.
There must be a message to society through condemnation,” he said.
In January 2023, a preliminary investigation into the dissemination of child pornography images was opened after a complaint from the Foundation for Children association targeting Bastien Vivès and two publishing houses, Glénat and Les Requins Marteaux.
The complaint targeted three of his comics featuring minors having sexual relations with adults, published between 2011 and 2018 (“The melons of anger”, “The mental discharge” and “Petit Paul”).
A first report, made after the publication of “Petit Paul” and requesting the withdrawal of this comic, was closed without action by the Nanterre public prosecutor's office in February 2019.