Can spectators who participated in the abuse be prosecuted?

Attempts to strangle, blows, bullying, humiliations … Furthermore, Streamer Jean Pormanove died Monday August 18. Therefore, live in front of dumbfounded spectators, after 300 hours of a show that indignant the whole planet, and several alerts with the public authorities that have not been heard. Meanwhile, Spectators also called “viewers”. Meanwhile, who mostly looked at without trying to prevent abuse, and who sometimes even participated by paying them, and therefore by sponsoring them. Nevertheless, What do these people risk? However, Will they be worried by justice? Moreover, And what is their moral responsibility, if not judicial?

That people have been passive witnesses of these horrors is no doubt. Similarly, the public of the “JeanPormanove” channel around 200,000 subscribers today, each stream session generating tens of thousands of views. For example, But others have immediately ordered strokes, launched insults, or paid for various humiliations, can spectators who participated abuse as revealed from 2024 Mediapart.

“You send me messages’ nick the ‘. Similarly, ” strikes the’ ” – Can spectators who participated abuse

Among the comments that 20 Minutes could have viewed, there is for example a subscriber who donates four euros online and declares on the cat: “To beat up to death JP we get pissed off”, from what, one of the channel officials, nicknamed Narutovie, administers a rain of blows to Raphaël Graven, alias JP or Jean Pormanove. Consequently, Another request from JP and Coudoux, another scapegoat for this macabre show, to “galler”. Therefore, Multiple insults are constantly raining: “Slut”. For example, “Golmon”, “Coto” for “Cotorep”, in reference to the organization responsible for assessing the aptitudes of disabled people.

Sometimes. Therefore, some Internet users try to calm the game, but these voices are marginal, and coexist with many comments encouraging violence, as Narutovie himself, whose real name is Owen Cenazandotti. Meanwhile, “When he does nothing in can spectators who participated abuse live. Furthermore, you send me messages ‘nique’, ‘hits the’, ‘he does nothing in live’, and as soon as it does things to him, you cry because it is a miskin [un faible, en argot] », Balances Narutovie on October 19, 2024.

Non -assistance to person in danger

What do these people risk? We interviewed several lawyers. law professionals who all believe that they can be continued, at various titles:

For those who watched without participating directly in the offense committee, they could be continued for non-assistance to person in danger, a crime punished with five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros. It is not certain that the Nice prosecutor’s office. which did not respond to the solicitations of 20 Minutes, Go on this ground, and if by chance these people were prosecuted, they could allege that the situation of “peril” could not be noted because it was drowned in the can spectators who participated abuse mass, estimates Master Romain Ruiz.

The spectators who insulted Raphaël Graven are at risk of 12. 000 euros fine and even 45,000 euros when the insult was validist, that is to say oriented on a possible handicap.

But it was obviously the “viewers” that have participated directly in the abuse by ordering them via donations that risk. the biggest. As accomplices. they incur the same penalty as Owen Cenazandotti and Safine Hamadi, the other torturer of “Coudoux” and “Jean Pormanove”. “They can be prosecuted for complicity in acts of torture and barbarism, harassment, voluntary violence, insults …” details lawyer Agathe Morel, specializing in violence on minors.

Better punished violence

In April 2025. the trial of a Frenchman who commissioned hundreds of live sex shows featuring minors, also contributed to the question of violence commanded online was taken more seriously, and punished more severely. Until then. consumers and consumers of live rape on children, called can spectators who participated abuse “live streamings”, were punished for simple “detention and dissemination of child pornographic images”. This time. Bouhalem Bouchiba, ex-Disney and Pixar “Star” graphist, was sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment complicity in rapes and sexual assault on minors. “It took the courts a little time to understand what it was but they ended up adapting,” comments Agathe Morel.

The question of consent

Just as serious as these violence. it is possible that Internet users who participated and demanded that we are hitting and humiliated Raphaël Graven escapes prosecution, because there is added a little different ingredient compared to the violence commanded on children: the question of consent.

In theory. French case law and legal tradition in France believe that the question of consent does not intervene in the decision, reports Maître Ruiz: “Even if someone agrees to be struck or tortured, that does not change the obligation to intervene”. “We cannot consent to what alienates can spectators who participated abuse us. ” adds Lorraine Questiaux, a lawyer specializing in the defense of women victims of violence. Who would think that a man who has eaten his neighbor must be released, even with the latter’s consent?

Except that in recent years. the question more and more omnipresent of consent in public debate has come to blur the tracks. “The culture of violence has neutralized legal effectiveness. we are no longer able to protect individuals from acts of manifest torture,” worries Lorraine Questiaux, who recently opposed a definition of rape based on the concept of non-consent, such as that which France has just adopted.

Among the things that accelerated this transformation of French law is the decision of the European Court of Human Rights of February 17. 2005 following the conviction of a man who had particularly violent sadomasochistic practices with his partner. The man. once condemned, arguing of the consent according to him, can spectators who participated abuse had gone to bring the case to the level of the European jurisdiction. The latter did not prove him right. the examination of the videos having shown that his partner had well refused certain acts. But the Court considered that in a certain framework. when sadistic practices do not undermine “infringement of the health of the victim” and “when the latter legally consents”, then they do not provide the law.

Can spectators who participated abuse

Free and enlightened consent?

In the Pormanove case. the latter had been interviewed by the justice system and had claimed to be fully consenting to what was going on. Raphaël Graven. Coudoux indicated “to have never been injured, be completely free to move and decisions and refused to be examined by a doctor and a psychiatrist,” said prosecutor Damien Martinelli in a statement released on Wednesday.

But have we really wanted if Raphaël Graven was completely consenting? For Véronique can spectators who participated abuse Béchu. director of the E-Enfance Observatory and former head of the OFMIN strategy pole (an expert office to combat violence against minors), the stake focuses on the nature and importance of the investigations carried out: “If we give an important part to the consent, then it is necessary to verify whether it is free and enlightened and if there is no abuse of weakness or vulnerability. “She considers that it will be necessary to” establish the responsibility of those who have ordered the violence committed “and ultimately. legislate to protect minors, in particular. Otherwise this culture of violence is not about to back away.