“What you don’t do in the street, don’t do it on social networks”. Until the very end of the hearing, the magistrate Michaël Humbert will have shown pedagogy with regard to the thirteen defendants sent back for the cyberstalking of Mila. In front of him, only seven of these young men and women stood side by side to listen to the court judgment. In total, eleven of them were sentenced to terms ranging from 4 to 6 months in prison. Pierre R., who had called for “the” to “blow up” was released for lack of evidence and another, Meven B., benefited from a procedural violation.
For the president of the 10th chamber, the wave that targeted the adolescent Iséroise in the fall of 2020, after the publication of a new video in which she criticized Islam and its prophet, no doubt it was of a “harassment company”. “The court considers that social networks constitute in principle a public space (…) the user – except for a particular configuration of his messages – must therefore expect that his messages are read by the widest possible audience”, explained Michaël Humbert.
Sentences “adapted to the situation”
Faces turned towards the three magistrates, the defendants listened attentively to the motivations of the court. Among them, several young people were tried for two offenses, that of cyberstalking and threats of death or another crime. However, these Internet users were fired on the basis of a single message, tweet or e-mail, targeting Mila. “There is a principle in law according to which you cannot be convicted twice for the same facts (…) The court therefore had to reject one of these qualifications. The choice was made to retain the one that was most suited to the situation, ”said Michaël Humbert. N’Aissata C., a 23-year-old psychology student, is the only one to have been sentenced to 6 months in prison for death threats. In a long email addressed directly to the high school student from Isère, the young woman said she wanted to “slash Mila’s face and let her body rot in a wood”.
All inserted, in training or looking for a job and without a criminal record, the defendants had asked the court to show leniency and not to include their conviction in their criminal record. But the court decided to reject this request. “The risk of recidivism exists”, estimated the president of the 10th chamber before lashing: “It would not be really fair that what we thought we were doing hidden behind a screen could not be brought to the attention of a public wider. If they don’t want something to be known, they might as well not.
“The social network is the street”
In his decision, Michaël Humbert also insisted on the “physical” and “psychological” consequences of this cyberstalking on Mila. “We consider you responsible for the damage caused” to the teenager he developed, ordering several defendants to pay 1,500 euros in damages and 1,000 euros for legal fees. In total, according to the young woman’s lawyer, Mila would have received “more than 100,000 hate messages and death threats” after her videos.
As a final piece of advice, the magistrate launched to the defendants present this morning: “The social network is the street. When you meet someone in the street, we would forbid ourselves to insult him, threaten him or make fun of him. What you don’t do in the street, don’t do it on social networks ”.
At the end of the hearing, still surrounded by her parents and her lawyer Richard Malka, Mila, floral dress and bleached green hair, welcomed this decision: “We won, and we will win again. What I want is that all together we never stop giving up, that we continue to fight (…) and I never want us to make the victims feel guilty ”.