Myriam Leroy's stalker sentenced to 10 months in prison: return to this cyberbullying case

Home → Article → Myriam Leroy's stalker sentenced to 10 months in prison: return to this cyberbullying case

10 months suspended prison sentence, payment of a fine, obligation to undergo violence awareness training: the Brussels Criminal Court sentenced, on Tuesday, the man who was accused of having harassed the journalist and author since 2012 Miriam Leroy. The messages he regularly published on social networks were therefore not mere "opinions", as he had denied, but many facts constituting online harassment. The judge pointed out that the person concerned, who was absent at the hearing, had never realized the inappropriateness of his behavior.

In 2019, Le Vif devoted a long investigation to this emblematic subject of the question of cyberbullying. Return, below, to this affair which had inspired Myriam Leroy for the writing of her novel The Red Eyes.

They are men. Myriam Leroy, journalist, columnist, writer, filed a complaint, in October 2017, with civil action against this gentleman - let's call him Matthieu -, for acts of harassment, harassment by means of a network of electronic communication and acts of sexism, committed between 2012 and 2017. After investigation, the king's prosecutor considered the facts to be established and requested the dismissal of the "braggart" before the criminal court. Freedom of expression does not allow everything: if reasoned criticism is authorized and even desirable, insult is a crime.

Read also: Harassment against Myriam Leroy: the Web therefore does not authorize everything (opinion)

The chamber of the council, which looked into the case on September 24, 2019, must now decide in the coming weeks either to dismiss the case, that is to say to drop the proceedings; either a referral to the criminal court [Editor's note: which will indeed be the case later]; or a referral to an Assize Court, if it considers that Matthieu's public insults, repeated for years on the Web, constitute a press offence. "In practice, it appeared that the mobilization of an assize court for this type of offense was totally inadequate and that the judicial authorities preferred to avoid it, leading to de facto impunity", noted the evaluation commission. of the federal legislation relating to the fight against discrimination, in 2017. In this case, the file could never be judged.

Also read: Sami Haenen found guilty of press offense and verbal threats against women: 12 months suspended sentence

This is what is at play here. By filing this complaint, Myriam Leroy, who did not wish to speak publicly, is pursuing two objectives. Stop the bullying. "This has been the case since 2013", trumpets Matthieu - which the facts revealed in our investigation deny. And that the possible conviction of the person concerned serves as an example. This is also the goal pursued by the AJP (Association of Professional Journalists), which supports Myriam Leroy in this matter. "By supporting this action, the AJP wants to combat the harassment of women journalists on social networks. We need a real awareness of the damage that trolls cause, insists Martine Simonis, its general secretary. A judicial decision could help not only journalists but all those who have to face cyber behavior of hatred, sexism or racism.

Read also: Sexist cyberbullying: allowing women to appropriate the right to exist online, a societal issue

Let's rewind. According to the Vif / L'Express survey, Myriam Leroy and Matthieu have known each other since 2011. She was a columnist on Pure FM at the time, he became known with a pop-rock blog that he has been running since 2002. In 2011, he created another, more generalist platform. There are satirical and provocative posts, among others devoted to the actors of the Brussels media and cultural milieu, which Matthieu pounded with regularity. He and Myriam Leroy sometimes meet at concerts and read each other on social networks.

In 2011, the journalist offered Matthieu to be the subject of a documentary to be broadcast on the show All That Won't Give Us Back the Congo, on RTBF. He declines the invitation. Is this where the grenade unpins? The following year in any case, their exchanges on social networks harden. She pinned him for "his very right-wing political convictions", denounced his "imposture", arguing that she knocked everyone out without bearing the slightest criticism herself. He begins to target the humorist Dan Gagnon, at the time companion of the columnist. This first crosses out the blogger from his contacts on Facebook and then asks him to put an end to his actions.

Myriam Leroy's stalker sentenced to 10 months in prison: return to this cyberbullying case

A great sensitive

So things go into a spin. Why, basically? "She treated me with disdain and it hurt me. I'm very sensitive... It all started from there", admits the blogger on the Web. Perhaps. But this virtual shelling of an increasingly well-known figure is also attracting new readers to his blog. And he rubs his hands. In this world where the number of views recorded each day on a site determines the happiness coefficient of its author, publicly opposing Myriam Leroy is a godsend. "I was delighted to have an opponent of this size, he recalls. I even began to receive backlash from people I did not know. "That is to say.

From then on, the messages dedicated to the journalist multiplied under the pen of Matthieu, including on Facebook and Twitter. Excerpts: "The fake brunette on duty talks about David Bowie, of whom she obviously knows nothing. Instead of focusing on subjects within her reach, at random: clothes from H&M, the Weight Watchers diet or the bars of the place Flagey." "Myriam Leroy, high priestess of silly good-thinking, Stalinism of good taste and arbiter of the elegance of the media space in the socialist region of Wallonia-Brussels." "Myriam Leroy is a perfidious, manipulative, greedy person, calculator and liar. Someone told me that she concentrates all the negative qualities that are generally attributed to the female gender - it seems to me quite well seen. " " Women with big buttocks are more intelligent. Myriam Leroy, Nobel Prize? “Apart from perhaps stories of threesomes (orgies) under coke with Eric and Ramzy, what could she have fun to tell?” “How villainous you can be!”, Compliments a subscriber. "It's still nice", replies Matthieu. Some try to stop him, in vain. The repetitive attacks are systematically built on sexist expressions and anti-Semitic references, even though the journalist is not Jewish.

Read also: Myriam Leroy's stalker sent back to the criminal court

Comes November 29, 2013. Myriam Leroy, then a columnist on Canal +, roundly attacks Dieudonné, a French comedian condemned on multiple occasions for comments deemed discriminatory, anti-Semitic, negationist and revisionist, as well as for incitement to hatred or to racial or religious violence. "It is simply inappropriate to address someone in such a condescending and vulgar way, even if he is anti-Semitic, which remains to be proven", reacts Matthieu. In 2014, his Facebook home page displayed a photo representing the comedian alongside Alain Soral, this far-right Franco-Swiss essayist convicted several times of Holocaust denial, defamation and racial slurs. Facing the lens, smiling, they make a quenelle, this gesture which is both a denunciation of the "system" and a Hitler salute.

Too fat to do porn

During this time, threats and filthy tweets are pouring out by tons on the Belgian journalist: fans of the very popular Dieudonné go to the front to reduce the impertinent to powder. The "Big Zionist bitch, we're going to put you on, we're not going to miss you", "I'm hiding on you", and others "He always makes (sic) laugh (sic) on the other hand, you go back to your grandfather the deportee" are flooding social networks. "Myriam Leroy, too ugly to play Miss Weather, too fat to do porn", nicely completes the picture. Sheltered by the anonymizing Web, the dogs are released.

The columnist is placed under police protection. In Belgium, Matthieu and his followers drink whey. “She has so many cojones (balls) that she closed her Facebook account an hour after the chronicle was broadcast,” laughs the first on social networks. The blogger also does not hesitate to forward a photomontage from the Equality and Reconciliation site by Alain Soral, again, showing the swollen face of Myriam Leroy, her lips moistened with sperm. She holds in her hand a book titled "How to blow your breech off at Anal". "I wouldn't retweet that today, confesses Matthieu: the law has changed."

Since 2014, indeed. But that year, he didn't hesitate to share again the very fresh "Myriam, little Zionist cock-sucking whore, close your pipe hole". Nor to recommend to the columnist a Web site devoted to otoplasty. Next ? He doesn't post anything about her anymore, he swears. "I forget about him." His blog is put to sleep and he "disappears from the Internet." This is not correct. We find him notably evoking his favorite subject in 2016: "An uneducated doubled with a plague, all with protruding ears. She knows the taste of Dan Gagnon's penis, tabernacle!"

The journalist's entourage advises her to turn her back, to cut herself off from social networks, to accept insults as the price of her notoriety. But through the door or through the window, she always learns of the last blow struck by Matthieu. The attacks are virtual, the injury is not. Constantly on the alert, Myriam Leroy modifies her professional trajectory to offer fewer holds to the assailant. Wasted effort.

The obsession with protruding ears

At the end of 2016. Two abusive messages reached Myriam Leroy via the Sacd (society of authors and composers) and RTBF websites. " Incompetent presenter. Choice of guests based on cronyism and corruption. Shitty show, unworthy of public service. All the presenter can do is suck cock and get her dirty ass fucked for climb the ladder at the RTBF. She is ugly in addition with her protruding ears. Shame on the RTBF. " The columnist suspects Matthieu of being at the origin, which he, questioned by the police, denies. The investigation will establish that the email address tagueule.com, from which these messages left, was created by someone who is located in Quebec. Nothing allows us to be sure. Nothing incriminates Matthieu either, even if the theme of protruding ears is one of his obsessions. It will not be possible to trace the original IP address of this account: the response time has expired and Microsoft refuses to provide the investigators with the information they request.

Myriam Leroy discreetly lodged a complaint with the king's prosecutor in February 2017. In this tense context, Matthieu, who assures us that he is acting "for fun", writes to her to be surprised at the harassment of which she accuses him; then he tries, in vain, to follow her on Instagram. Myriam Leroy once again goes to the police. Matthieu is heard by the investigators for the facts that she attributes to him and for a second case, relating to the creation of a fake Twitter account entitled Florance Hainaut (sic), in reference to another RTBF journalist, Florence Hainaut, close to the writer. The latter immediately filed a complaint against X. The investigation revealed that one of the IP addresses used for this account was... that of Myriam Leroy's company. According to the information gathered by Le Vif/L'Express, it is obvious that, for the justice system and the investigators, even if the proof cannot be provided, the author's address was hacked. By who ? Mystery. Twitter refused to cooperate with the investigation, arguing that the account, opened in February 2017, was closed in May of the same year.

Matthieu, a computer scientist in a large bank, denies being involved in this file. He accuses Myriam Leroy of having set up this fake account herself. It would therefore not be credible, neither on this point nor on the rest. But no complaint has been filed against her and she is not being prosecuted for creating a fake account or identity theft. On the contrary, the investigators suggest that it make its IT infrastructure more secure. Florence Hainaut's complaint ends with a dismissal for unknown author, in May 2018.

In August 2017, Matthieu made a written commitment to the judicial police "never again to try to contact Myriam Leroy by any means". Two months later, her blog is closed and all comments are deleted. The king's prosecutor warns him that the proceedings against him are temporarily held in abeyance but invites him not to come forward with the columnist, whatever the way.

A new complaint, with civil action this time, was finally filed by Myriam Leroy on October 31 of the same year. At the request of the investigating judge, the police searched Matthieu's home in March 2018. The computer they took away contained no relevant information. According to the king's prosecutor, the blogger nevertheless "harassed a person when he knew or should have known that he would seriously affect his peace of mind by this behavior", which corresponds to the legal definition of harassment. He should therefore be sent back to the criminal court.

Myriam Leroy closed her Facebook and Twitter accounts last February. According to information from Le Vif / L'Express, Matthieu is still very active on social networks where he makes homophobic, racist comments and incitement to hatred. His accounts have been blocked several times for this reason. He no longer mentions Myriam Leroy, except in veiled terms. Aspiring to the return of a "virile and conquering Christianity", he recognizes and accepts public insults. Not harassment. The facts have been going on since 2012.

With a gesture, he points to a table a bit apart. You can never be too careful. “I thought she was solid. If I had known that Myriam was so fragile, I would not have written a third of a quarter about her. I never wanted this cyberclash to take on such serious proportions, especially for her. With hindsight, I find this confrontation childish; it brought me nothing." Under his black Fred Perry glasses and polo shirt, the man swears that he regrets having "bragged" on social networks. He speaks well, chooses his words carefully, does not lose his temper. He calls to witness, is indignant, challenges. “Others that I attacked on my blogs or on Twitter and Facebook, like Jérôme Colin, Rudy Léonet or Thierry Coljon – all journalists or presenters – never filed a complaint.” Them, men. Myriam Leroy, journalist, columnist, writer, filed a complaint, in October 2017, with civil action against this gentleman - let's call him Matthieu -, for acts of harassment, harassment by means of a network of electronic communication and acts of sexism, committed between 2012 and 2017. After investigation, the king's prosecutor considered the facts to be established and requested the dismissal of the "braggart" before the criminal court. Freedom of expression does not allow everything: if reasoned criticism is authorized and even desirable, insult is a crime. The council chamber, which considered the case on September 24, 2019, must now decide within coming weeks either of a dismissal, that is to say an abandonment of the proceedings; either a referral to the criminal court [Editor's note: which will indeed be the case later]; or a referral to an Assize Court, if it considers that Matthieu's public insults, repeated for years on the Web, constitute a press offence. "In practice, it appeared that the mobilization of an assize court for this type of offense was totally inadequate and that the judicial authorities preferred to avoid it, leading to de facto impunity", noted the evaluation commission. of the federal legislation relating to the fight against discrimination, in 2017. In this case, the file could never be judged. That is what is at stake here. By filing this complaint, Myriam Leroy, who did not wish to speak publicly, is pursuing two objectives. Stop the bullying. "This has been the case since 2013", trumpets Matthieu - which the facts revealed in our investigation deny. And that the possible conviction of the person concerned serves as an example. This is also the goal pursued by the AJP (Association of Professional Journalists), which supports Myriam Leroy in this matter. "By supporting this action, the AJP wants to combat the harassment of women journalists on social networks. We need a real awareness of the damage that trolls cause, insists Martine Simonis, its general secretary. A judicial decision could help not only journalists but all those who have to face cyber behavior of hatred, sexism or racism. According to the Vif / L'Express survey, Myriam Leroy and Matthieu have known each other since 2011. She was a columnist on Pure FM at the time, he became known with a pop-rock blog that he has been running since 2002. In 2011, he created another, more generalist platform. There are satirical and provocative posts, among others devoted to the actors of the Brussels media and cultural milieu, which Matthieu pounded with regularity. He and Myriam Leroy sometimes meet at concerts and read each other on social networks. In 2011, the journalist offered Matthieu to be the subject of a documentary to be broadcast on the show All That Won't Give Us Back the Congo, on RTBF. He declines the invitation. Is this where the grenade unpins? The following year in any case, their exchanges on social networks harden. She pinned him for "his very right-wing political convictions", denounced his "imposture", arguing that she knocked everyone out without bearing the slightest criticism herself. He begins to target the humorist Dan Gagnon, at the time companion of the columnist. This first crosses out the blogger from his contacts on Facebook and then asks him to put an end to his actions. So things go into a spin. Why, basically? "She treated me with disdain and it hurt me. I'm very sensitive... It all started from there", admits the blogger on the Web. Perhaps. But this virtual shelling of an increasingly well-known figure is also attracting new readers to his blog. And he rubs his hands. In this world where the number of views recorded each day on a site determines the happiness coefficient of its author, publicly opposing Myriam Leroy is a godsend. "I was delighted to have an opponent of this size, he recalls. I even began to receive backlash from people I did not know. "That is to say. From then on, the messages dedicated to the journalist multiplied under the pen of Matthieu, including on Facebook and Twitter. Excerpts: "The fake brunette on duty talks about David Bowie, of whom she obviously knows nothing. Instead of focusing on subjects within her reach, at random: clothes from H&M, the Weight Watchers diet or the bars of the place Flagey." "Myriam Leroy, high priestess of silly good-thinking, Stalinism of good taste and arbiter of the elegance of the media space in the socialist region of Wallonia-Brussels." "Myriam Leroy is a perfidious, manipulative, greedy person, calculator and liar. Someone told me that she concentrates all the negative qualities that are generally attributed to the female gender - it seems to me quite well seen. " " Women with big buttocks are more intelligent. Myriam Leroy, Nobel Prize? “Apart from perhaps stories of threesomes (orgies) under coke with Eric and Ramzy, what could she have fun to tell?” “How villainous you can be!”, Compliments a subscriber. "It's still nice", replies Matthieu. Some try to stop him, in vain. The attacks, repetitive, are systematically built on sexist expressions and anti-Semitic references, even though the journalist is not Jewish. Comes on November 29, 2013. Myriam Leroy, then a columnist on Canal +, takes a sharp attack on Dieudonné, humorist Frenchman sentenced on multiple occasions for remarks deemed to be discriminatory, anti-Semitic, negationist and revisionist, as well as for incitement to racial or religious hatred or violence. "It is simply inappropriate to address someone in such a condescending and vulgar way, even if he is anti-Semitic, which remains to be proven", reacts Matthieu. In 2014, his Facebook home page displayed a photo representing the comedian alongside Alain Soral, this far-right Franco-Swiss essayist convicted several times of Holocaust denial, defamation and racial slurs. Facing the lens, smiling, they make a quenelle, this gesture which is both a denunciation of the "system" and a Hitler salute. During this time, threats and filthy tweets are pouring out by tons on the Belgian journalist: fans of the very popular Dieudonné go to the front to reduce the impertinent to powder. The "Big Zionist bitch, we're going to put you on, we're not going to miss you", "I'm hiding on you", and others "He always makes (sic) laugh (sic) on the other hand, you go back to your grandfather the deportee" are flooding social networks. "Myriam Leroy, too ugly to play Miss Weather, too fat to do porn", nicely completes the picture. Sheltered by the anonymizing Web, the dogs are released. The columnist is placed under police protection. In Belgium, Matthieu and his followers drink whey. “She has so many cojones (balls) that she closed her Facebook account an hour after the chronicle was broadcast,” laughs the first on social networks. The blogger also does not hesitate to forward a photomontage from the Equality and Reconciliation site by Alain Soral, again, showing the swollen face of Myriam Leroy, her lips moistened with sperm. She holds in her hand a book titled "How to blow your breech off at Anal". “I would no longer retweet that today, confesses Matthieu: the law has changed.” Since 2014, indeed. But that year, he didn't hesitate to share again the very fresh "Myriam, little Zionist cock-sucking whore, close your pipe hole". Nor to recommend to the columnist a Web site devoted to otoplasty. Next ? He doesn't post anything about her anymore, he swears. "I forget about him." His blog is put to sleep and he "disappears from the Internet." This is not correct. We find him in particular evoking his favorite subject in 2016: “An uneducated doubled with a plague, all with protruding ears. She knows the taste of Dan Gagnon’s penis, tabernacle!” The journalist’s entourage advises her to do the big back, to cut themselves off from social networks, to accept insult as the price of their notoriety. But through the door or through the window, she always learns of the last blow struck by Matthieu. The attacks are virtual, the injury is not. Constantly on the alert, Myriam Leroy modifies her professional trajectory to offer fewer holds to the assailant. Wasted effort. At the end of 2016. Two abusive messages reached Myriam Leroy via the Sacd (society of authors and composers) and RTBF websites. " Incompetent presenter. Choice of guests based on cronyism and corruption. Shitty show, unworthy of public service. All the presenter can do is suck cock and get her dirty ass fucked for climb the ladder at the RTBF. She is ugly in addition with her protruding ears. Shame on the RTBF. " The columnist suspects Matthieu of being at the origin, which he, questioned by the police, denies. The investigation will establish that the email address tagueule.com, from which these messages left, was created by someone who is located in Quebec. Nothing allows us to be sure. Nothing incriminates Matthieu either, even if the theme of protruding ears is one of his obsessions. It will not be possible to trace the original IP address of this account: the response time has expired and Microsoft refuses to provide the investigators with the information they request. Myriam Leroy discreetly lodged a complaint with the king's prosecutor in February 2017. In this tense context, Matthieu, who assures us that he is acting "for fun", writes to her to be surprised at the harassment of which she accuses him; then he tries, in vain, to follow her on Instagram. Myriam Leroy once again goes to the police. Matthieu is heard by the investigators for the facts that she attributes to him and for a second case, relating to the creation of a fake Twitter account entitled Florance Hainaut (sic), in reference to another RTBF journalist, Florence Hainaut, close to the writer. The latter immediately filed a complaint against X. The investigation revealed that one of the IP addresses used for this account was... that of Myriam Leroy's company. According to the information gathered by Le Vif/L'Express, it is obvious that, for the justice system and the investigators, even if the proof cannot be provided, the author's address was hacked. By who ? Mystery. Twitter refused to cooperate with the investigation, arguing that the account, opened in February 2017, was closed in May of the same year. Matthieu, a computer scientist in a large bank, denies being involved in this file. He accuses Myriam Leroy of having set up this fake account herself. It would therefore not be credible, neither on this point nor on the rest. But no complaint has been filed against her and she is not being prosecuted for creating a fake account or identity theft. On the contrary, the investigators suggest that it make its IT infrastructure more secure. Florence Hainaut's complaint ends with a dismissal for unknown author, in May 2018. In August 2017, Matthieu undertakes in writing with the judicial police "never again to try to contact Myriam Leroy by any means". Two months later, her blog is closed and all comments are deleted. The king's prosecutor warns him that the proceedings against him are temporarily held in abeyance but invites him not to come forward with the columnist, whatever the way. A new complaint, with civil action this time, was finally filed by Myriam Leroy on October 31 of the same year. At the request of the investigating judge, the police searched Matthieu's home in March 2018. The computer they took away contained no relevant information. According to the king's prosecutor, the blogger nevertheless "harassed a person when he knew or should have known that he would seriously affect his peace of mind by this behavior", which corresponds to the legal definition of harassment. He should therefore be sent back to the criminal court. Myriam Leroy closed her Facebook and Twitter accounts last February. According to information from Le Vif / L'Express, Matthieu is still very active on social networks where he makes homophobic, racist comments and incitement to hatred. His accounts have been blocked several times for this reason. He no longer mentions Myriam Leroy, except in veiled terms. Aspiring to the return of a "virile and conquering Christianity", he recognizes and accepts public insults. Not harassment. The facts have been going on since 2012.