The cartoonist was the target of death threats, after several associations filed complaints for the dissemination of child pornography images in his works, sparking heated controversy.
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“Death penalty for pedos”, “we will have your skin”. The Paris criminal court sentenced five people on Thursday June 13 to suspended prison sentences ranging from two to seven months. They were thus found guilty of having threatened death or violence against comic book author Bastien Vivès, the target of an investigation for the distribution of child pornography images in some of his works.
The five defendants, three men and two women aged 21 to 31, will also have to each pay 500 to 1,000 euros to the designer, for his moral damage, plus 500 euros for his lawyer’s fees, ordered the court. They appeared for messages posted on social networks, most of them in December 2022. The cartoonist was present at the hearing but did not speak.
For the representative of the prosecution, these online threats are all the more intolerable as they can encourage other Internet users to “taking action”. “If you consider that Bastien Vivès’ publications are questionable, you have the right to say so, but not to threaten him with death!”, she exclaimed to the attention of the defendants. Most, however, admitted at the bar that they had not really read the works in question.
“I was blinded by things I read on the internet, it’s stupid”said one, who had sent the designer an image of Kalashnikov bullets, with the words in English “cure for pedophilia”. “I followed a movement. I didn’t know his comics at all”recognized another, who had written “death penalty for pedos”. A Fine Arts student admitted to having “exceeds the limits” by sending a message labeled “you and all predators like this, we will cut your balls off”. “It was a picture”she defended herself in court.
