He greeted the verdict without flinching. After ten days of trial, Yannick Nascimiento, the streamer better known as “Mr WaynZ” was found guilty of rape, violence, kidnapping and fraud against several of his former spouses and was sentenced on Friday to 18 years in prison. criminal imprisonment. The day before, the public prosecutor had requested twenty years of imprisonment against him.
This 34-year-old former YouTuber was also on trial for attempted murder of Cécilia * on January 20, 2019 in her Parisian apartment in the 19th arrondissement, by strangling and suffocating her. It was the cries and calls for help from his victim, with whom he had been in a relationship for three months, which alerted the police. If he was found guilty of kidnapping and willful violence on Cécilia, the Paris Assize Court did not retain the qualification of attempted murder, nor the character of concubine.
“Don’t be afraid, you won’t see me again”
When the verdict was announced, Cecilia collapsed. “My client is mute, it is difficult to understand even being denied the status of spouse that the accused himself nevertheless recognized during the proceedings”, reacted his lawyer, Me Mehdi Bouzaida. Opened in January 2019, the investigation had identified four other alleged victims, mostly fragile women encountered in the online gaming bubble where “Mr WaynZ” enjoyed a small reputation, with 220,000 subscribers on YouTube and nearly 100,000 on Twitch. Three of these women had filed a complaint, denouncing violence, rape or acts of kidnapping and fraud committed between 2007 and 2019.
During the trial, which began on January 31, plaintiffs and witnesses described a funny but impulsive, jealous and dominating gamer in the private sphere. Yannick Nascimiento, imprisoned since October 2019, put forward as a line of defense his chaotic childhood marked by domestic violence and rape, claiming to have undertaken work on himself and his actions. “I was a bad person, what I did is serious,” he said before the deliberation. “I apologize to these women. You didn’t do this, it was me. Don’t be afraid, you won’t see me again,’ he added in an oversized, wrinkled white shirt.
*Name has been changed.