Five men were tried for online harassment of DJ Barbara Butch following her participation in the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, staged by Thomas Jolly.
“Massive digital violence that is exercised more willingly than it is dematerialized”, stressed the president of the court. This Friday, November 21, the Paris correctional court condemned four of the five men who had appeared at the end of September for online harassment and threats of violence against DJ Barbara Butch following her participation in the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
One of the defendants, who was not present at the hearing, was sentenced to a firm term of ten months’ imprisonment – “non-aménageable”, the judge specified during the reading of the decision, noting “extremely serious acts”. Three others were given a few months in prison with suspended sentences and the fifth, by contrast, was acquitted, the court having found that the constitutive elements of the offenses were not met in his case.
Barbara Butch, Thomas Jolly…
Student, family man, caregiver… Presenting profiles of ordinary people, the defendants at the hearing all admitted sending the messages, but not their threatening or harassing nature. Several explained having been offended by the “parody of religion”. Barbara Butch appeared at the turntables during the passage entitled “Festivity,” on the Debilly footbridge spanning the Seine, surrounded in particular by drag queens and the singer Philippe Katerine, nearly naked and painted blue. The hateful messages had flooded in thereafter, the sequence having provoked the ire of conservative and far-right circles who cried blasphemy, thinking they were witnessing a parody of the Last Supper despite denials from the ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly.
At the hearing, on September 25, the lesbian DJ and anti-fat-phobia activist had said she had “just wanted to bury herself and disappear at that moment”. Her partner also testified that she had received threats of rape. Barbara Butch’s attorney, Maître Audrey Msellati, insisted on the health consequences for her client, who explained having developed agoraphobia and psoriasis after the events, and has been taking antidepressants since. Other artists involved in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games also faced online harassment. In May, seven people were thus convicted of having sent hateful messages to Thomas Jolly.
