During the trial in early November, the singer came to testify to the devastating impact of some 3,000 messages that had targeted him on social networks after his concert in Saint-Eustache.
Suspended prison sentences of three to six months were handed down Monday in Paris against 11 people who had harassed singer Eddy de Pretto online after a concert in June 2021 in a Parisian church. These young men were sentenced for messages calling the artist “gigantic booband accusing him of havingdefiledtheir Catholic faith by performing a piece evoking homosexuality in the Saint-Eustache church. The criminal court also pronounced six acquittals. During the trial in early November, the 29-year-old singer came to testify to the devastating impact of some 3,000 messages that had targeted him on social networks after his concert in Saint-Eustache. “We will be there on every date to remind you that God’s army does not leave this kind of blasphemy unpunished.», «big shit bag to defile our religion», «Down with the Republic that makes us sub-humans of this species“, proclaimed some of these publications on Instagram. “I was very afraid to leave my house, sleep disorders (…) depressive disorders, I couldn’t understand this violence“, had testified Eddy de Pretto.
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Presenting very diverse profiles but claiming, for the most part, their attachment to Catholicism, the defendants had affirmed to have felt “humiliated» by the term «sodomiteused by Eddy de Pretto in one of the songs performed in Saint-Eustache. Some had also tried to justify themselves by rejecting any violent intention and by putting forward their desire to pose “a legal framework” for “the defense of our society“. During the hearing, the prosecutor called their messages “abuse of freedom of expressionand recalled that the “blasphemy and offenses against religion are not punishable by law“. Eddy de Pretto is “very satisfiedof the court’s decision, one of his lawyers, Me Martin Lémery, told the press on Monday. “The court recalls that one cannot with impunity engage in the digital lynching of a person whose public commitments, sexual orientation or personality have had the misfortune to offend certain extremists“, he added. Putting the importance of the releases into perspective, the lawyer hoped that this decision could “to be a new stone in the jurisprudential building in the fight against discrimination and harassment of packs on the internet“.