Lyon (AFP)

The Lyon public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the corruption of minors targeting a French youtuber well known to young audiences, ExperimentBoy, accused by adolescents of having exchanged sexual messages, photos and videos with them.

The Lyon public prosecutor's office opened, on June 22, "an investigation aimed at this youtubeur on charges of corruption of minors", "recording, broadcasting or possession of pornographic images of minors, and" sexual propositions to minors of 15 years by electronic communication, "he told AFP, confirming information from the digital news portal Numerama.

According to this site, a collective report was sent to the Lyon prosecutor and two complaints were filed for corruption of a minor. The videographer who also appears on social networks under his real name, Baptiste Mortier-Dumont, would have targeted, between 2013 and 2019, at least a dozen of his fans.

Five victims were under the age of 15 when the YouTuber sent them for the first time invitations to exchange sexual photos or proposals for simultaneous masturbation, according to the investigation of the specialized site.

Numerama has published several explicit exchanges between the YouTuber with 1.15 million subscribers and young boys he approached on social networks.

"We sent each other videos when I came back from college," one of the plaintiffs, 14 at the time, told Numerama. "I could do whatever he wanted. He would ask me to do things, show me what he was doing. He would advise me to buy certain sex objects."

In June, when testimonies began to flow on Twitter, ExperimentBoy had reacted in a tweet: "The authors of the attempt to destabilize will be brought before the competent courts very soon (...) I let my lawyers do their work and continue my projects."

This 26 year old young man has made himself popular since 2012 by publishing dozens of bizarre and spectacular scientific experiments inspired by the Anglo-Saxon television program "MythBusters". His latest video, published at the end of July, has recorded more than 800,000 views.

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