He sent up to 70 messages a day to Sandrine Rousseau. A 40-year-old accused of having cyberharassed the ecologist deputy was placed under judicial supervision on Friday pending his trial on March 29 in Marseille.
“I regret infinitely, I blame myself a lot,” said this man living in Aubagne, blond goatee and white T-shirt, during an immediate appearance hearing at the Marseille court where he asked to postpone his judgment for prepare his defence.
“He used all possible means: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email”, “he had a total obsession with me”, told AFP the ecologist deputy who was not at the hearing.
Already convicted of harassment
Since May, she has filed a complaint twice against this man. It was the phone number he had given in one of his messages that would have made it possible to identify him. Unemployed, desocialized and suffering from addiction to ecstasys, the defendant still lives with his mother and said he was “lonely for fourteen years”.
In 2018, he had already been sentenced to community service for threatening and harassing a YouTuber specializing in video games. “I was in love with her and she didn’t answer me,” he explained on Friday about this previous affair. He will be tried on March 29 and is by then placed under judicial control with obligation of care and prohibition to come into contact with the victim.
“Sexism and rape culture”
“I receive dumps of messages. Fortunately most of them, I do not see them, because I have plenty of filters not to read them” but “it questions sexism and the culture of rape”, added Sandrine Rousseau.
Alongside other elected members of her environmental group in the National Assembly, the deputy had revealed on February 20 the threats they suffered, in particular on social networks. They had published on Instagram, under the hashtag “Balance ton intimidation”, the worst of the hateful, racist, and sexist threats they received regularly.