Invited on the BFMTV set, Yanis Marshall wanted to talk about his schooling marked by homophobia and school bullying.
It is a tragedy that affected all of France. On January 7, 13-year-old Lucas ended his life at his home. For many years, the little boy was the target of harassment and homophobia. A daily life that has become infernal for the teenager. Guest on the set of BFM TVon Thursday January 12, 2023, Yanis Marshall, the dance teacher of the star Academy wanted to reveal his emotion and his journey, which has also been colored by homophobia. “Me, it disgusts me personally that we are reaching a stage where a 13-year-old kid would rather die than continue living. I don’t even dare to imagine what he had to go through to get there, we know that kids that age can be very cruel…”did he declare.
Yanis Marshall knows what he’s talking about. He too was the victim of these homophobic remarks. “I went through it at school, like a lot of homosexuals. They called me Yanis the bitch all my childhood. It was literally my nickname in my city, he reported. C was a small town, I grew up in Vallauris in the south of France, Côte d’Azur, everyone knew each other, I changed schools about 3 times when I was a child”. The dancer will remain marked all his life by this dark period. He nevertheless specifies that he has never been “in homosexual provocation”. “But it’s true that, from a young age, I was doing my choreographies in the courtyard while the other boys were playing football (…) I was just different”, he explained. Yanis Marshall specifies that he was not supported by the teaching staff. “In the end, it was my mother who got me out of there, she herself fired teachers or supervisors who had done nothing”he recalled.
The moving testimony of Yanis Marshall
Nevertheless, Yanis Marshall makes a point of specifying that for him, one cannot be fundamentally “bad” when one is 13 years old. “It’s more ignorance, a lack of education on the part of parents, to want so surely to show off in front of others without realizing the harm we can do”, he believes.