For an Instagram post, he had received more than 3,000 messages of insults and death threats. In the dumpster of hateful words targeting singer Eddy de Pretto, known for his lyrics denouncing homophobia and sexist behavior, we found: “kind of gigantic fagot”, “die in hell you dirty dog” or “big shit bag to defile our religion”. 17 people have been prosecuted for this surge of often homophobic crap. This Monday, the Paris Criminal Court decided to sentence 11 of them to sentences ranging from three to six months in prison, suspended.
The artist had been invited to give a concert on June 17, 2021 at the Saint-Eustache church in Paris as part of a festival. He then performed his piece What’s the point, evoking the difficulties of reconciling his homosexuality and his faith. It was after this performance, published on Instagram, that the cyberbullying began. The 17 defendants aged 20 to 26 – who said they barely knew Eddy de Pretto at the time of the events and who mostly claim their Catholic faith – had expressed their indignation on the social network, either in public comment under the publication of the singer is directly to his attention, in private message.
Etienne Deshoulières, the lawyer for the Stop Homophobia association, which was also asking for compensation from the defendants in this case, remarked to Freed in October : “We are faced with a somewhat particular profile of cyberstalkers.” All of them are men agedearly twenties” and very often “from the beautiful neighborhoods”, including the third arrondissements of Lyon and Paris or even Saint-Germain-en-Laye. “Most are among others fundamentalist Catholics, concluded the lawyer.
Faced with this pressure, the singer ended up securing the services of a bodyguard and filing a complaint, triggering the opening of an investigation by the National Pole for the Fight against Online Hate (PLNH) of the Paris prosecutor’s office. “I was very scared to leave my house, trouble sleeping, […] depressive disorders, I could not understand this violence”said the singer again, noting that the priest of Saint-Eustache had told him “expressed all his support”.
“A beginning of reflection” for some?
The prosecution had requested on October 7 suspended sentences of three to six months in prison. The least severe sentences had in particular been claimed against defendants “having begun to reflect on the acts committed”. The prosecutor had described the messages addressed to Eddy de Pretto as“abuse of freedom of expression”. “You could have written: the Catholic community is outraged, you are doing this for the buzz, it is indecent, we are going to implement the legal means to respond to this blasphemy”she pointed out to the defendants.
The defense lawyers pleaded for acquittal, reduction of sentences or even non-registration in the criminal record, some questioning the quality of the investigation – which they judged “disappointing” – or the artificial intelligence of Instagram. Eddy de Pretto, 29, released a second album in 2021 titled To all the bastards. He had sold 300,000 copies of the previous one, Cure.