The videographer “Le Roi des Rats” published a video on Tuesday evening in which he collected the testimonies of six women, at least one of whom filed a complaint against the youtubeur Norman Thavaud.
“He liked the fact that I look young, that I don’t look my age, that I don’t look adult.” In a video of more than 40 minutes, the youtuber “The Rat King” published Tuesday evening an “investigation on Norman Thavaud alias Norman Made Videos” gathering the testimonies of six women.
They relate their relationship with the youtubeur whose police custody for rape and corruption of a minor – as part of a preliminary investigation entrusted to the Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM), opened in January 2022 – was lifted on Tuesday evening “for further investigation”, without prosecution at this stage.
Among these young women, who testify with their faces uncovered or on condition of anonymity, is Maggie D., a Quebec fan, who had publicly accused Norman Thavaud in 2020 of having manipulated her to obtain photos and videos of a sexual nature, while that she was 16 years old at the time. She said she had filed a complaint in Canada.
“The Rat King” did not specify in its video whether the other witnesses were among the five other women who filed a complaint against the youtubeur, according to the public prosecutor’s office.
A modus operandi is emerging
The six testimonies collected highlight Norman Thavaud’s modus operandi with these women to obtain naked photos, or even sexual intercourse.
“When I pushed him away he said something like ‘I didn’t think you were a girl like that’ […] He said to me: ‘normally, at your age, we already do stuff. It’s a baby character that you have'”, confided a young woman who was 18 at the time of the events. This reference to age came up, according to the witnesses, each time they refused her a demand.
An age difference which was, according to her, sometimes not a problem for the content creator. “He would make a lot of remarks to me about the fact that he liked the fact that I looked young, that I didn’t look my age, that I didn’t look adult,” she continued.
According to Release, five potential victims may have been raped. Two were minors at the time.
“He had taken off the condom”
During the video released Tuesday evening, a witness accused Norman Thavaud of having removed his condom without his consent during sex.
“We had a relationship, he used a condom. Except that when the relationship was over, I realized, physically and looking to the side, that he had taken the condom off,” she said. Explain.
This act, called “sleathing”, has been considered a sex crime in Canada since August, but a legal vagueness persists in France, due to a lack of case law.
The group “The Audacious”
At the end of the video, Maggie D. revealed that after the publication of her testimony on the Canadian media Urbania, a “thirty” of “victims” approached her. “Most of the stories sounded like mine,” she said.
So she decided to create a group that she called “Les Audacieuses”. “At the beginning, there were about fifteen of us in the group. Now there are eleven of us. We validate ourselves in the emotions and in the crimes that we have experienced”, she concluded.