Justice investigates complaints of harassed women on CuriousCat

• About sixty young women have been targeted in recent months by very explicit messages of rape, murder, forcible confinement or torture on the CuriousCat social network.
• Several victims wanted to file a complaint, but most said they encountered general indifference, even a certain contempt on the part of the police and gendarmes.
• “A first investigation was opened in Lille on Friday May 29. And Tuesday, June 2, an investigation was opened by the Pontoise Prosecutor's Office which entrusted the investigations to the section to fight organized crime ", explains to 20 Minutes Me Eric Morain, who today defends 22 complainants.

"I fantasize of cutting you with a scalpel and depositing your butchered corpses in garbage bags at the slaughterhouse". This is one of the messages received a few weeks ago by Marjorie, a user of the CuriousCat social network. Like her, around sixty young women have been targeted for several months by very explicit threats of rape, murder, forcible confinement or torture. "I am part of the super club for victims of a madman who sends us hate messages, rape, torture, death and so on. I received a total of over a hundred, ”says Marjorie .

Naomy, Donya, Masha, Marie, Louella, Illona and even Ophélie also live a real ordeal. Coming from all over France, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Béziers and the Paris region, all say that they received, overnight, hundreds of threats and insults on CuriousCat, a social network born in Spain and detained since 2018 by a South Korean company, which presents itself as "an anonymous place of questions and answers" and now has millions of users worldwide.

I am part of the super club for victims of a madman who sends us messages of rape, torture, death, racial hatred and so on. We all receive the same messages and sometimes personalized. CC does nothing, neither does the police. More than 100 messages to my credit. ccabuse pic.twitter.com/zdwz8zLWOf

Cyber ​​harassment, doxing, death threats ...

“It started for me last January. I was inundated with abject messages, between 10 and 30 a day. Very detailed descriptions of torture and rape, some referring to serial killers like "Montreal killer" Luka Rocco Magnotta, and some personalized messages on things I told on my Twitter feed, "says Marjorie at 20 Minutes . “As a rape victim, it was very difficult to read a stranger who described how he was going to rape and kill me. I did not understand why they wanted me to hurt so much, I even at one point suspected former people around me, I became paranoid… ”

Naomy began receiving malicious messages in early March, just before the confinement. “I received a lot of hate messages, especially of a racist nature, but also a video where we saw people beheaded, get their eyes blown. It traumatized me, ”says the young woman who lives in the south of France. "Then I started telling friends about it on Twitter, and I realized that I was not the only victim. The messages we received were sometimes even copied and pasted, which arrived on our accounts five to ten minutes apart ”.

But what has most destabilized the victims is the personal information that the harasser (s) managed to obtain. “We were treated to personalized attacks based on the profile of the victims. Some were targeted based on their sexual orientation, their skin color, their profession ... One of us received threats targeting her daughter, who was barely a year old, and the harasser even found the personal address of one of us, ”says Naomy, who for fear of being physically assaulted had to leave his apartment for almost three months to seek refuge in a safer place. Cyber ​​bullying has therefore been added to doxing, a practice which consists in seeking and disclosing on the Internet information on the identity and private life of a person with the aim of harming him. "Everything he could find on us on social networks, he used to attack."

I have dozens of messages like these.
The authorities do nothing. Curious cat does nothing.
Nobody does anything. Many of us are harassed with impunity. It must stop.
I run the #ccabuse

Talk about it. Support us. RT pic.twitter.com/vqDEHcMdzV

"We weren't supported at all"

Several young women wanted to go to file a complaint, but most of them had to face a general indifference, even a certain contempt. “At the police, I was told it didn't matter, that until he had my home address, I shouldn't worry. I was not taken seriously, and even tried to dissuade me from filing a complaint, ”says Naomy, angry at the attitude of the police. “I called 3919 several times, on the 17th, I went to two different police stations, nobody wanted to help me! To others, they were told that a complaint would be useless, and that it was better to take your troubles patiently, and wait for everything to settle down.

#ccabuse There's not everything. My crisis is 95% his fault. He reveled in trauma hoping for suicide. We don't have to be reduced to silence, to flight. We have the right to networks. What he does is illegal, murderous. I don't get the inaction from @PoliceNationale and @CuriousCatMe https://t.co/sGmHqzQ75v pic.twitter.com/vfcARcq8o5

To try to make things happen, Naomy therefore decided to speak publicly about this wave of cyberbullying by launching the hashtag #CCabuse [CuriousCat Abuse] on Twitter. Several victims then told of their ordeal by sharing screenshots of the messages received. "Thanks to the hashtag, we managed to identify around twenty more people, who today no longer feel alone," explains the young woman who also created a WhatsApp loop of discussions and mutual aid. "It was a relief to see that I was not alone, and at that time, anger took over," said Marjorie.

Curious Cat does nothing, the police do nothing, about 50 of us receive the same types of death threat and torture messages. Impunity must stop, if you are also a victim, share your screens with the hashtag #ccabuse pic.twitter.com/S97JqwfYFR

"This individual attacked us because we are women and he hates us, ”she explains. A theory shared by several victims who think that the perpetrator (s) of this cyberbullying could be an Incel, a term which designates an individual who belongs to a misogynistic online community whose members define themselves as being unable to find a romantic or sexual partner . “We are many to think that it is one and the same individual. We even nicknamed him Kevin among us, to make fun of him and play down the situation a little. But also to personify it, and show that all of this is not just virtual ”.

"Containment has multiplied the phenomena of cyberbullying"

Several victims, now grouped together; have decided to call on Me Eric Morain, a lawyer specializing in cyber harassment, to defend them and bring the case to justice. “To date, 22 complaints have been registered in Lille, Angers, Lyon via Marseille, Narbonne, Béziers, Nanterre or Pontoise. A first investigation was opened in Lille on Friday May 29. And Tuesday, June 2, an investigation was opened by the prosecution of Pontoise (Val-d'Oise) which entrusted the investigations to the section of fight against organized crime ", explains to 20 Minutes Me Morain, who still expects to other victim complaint files that contacted him. “My clients have received totally despicable messages that have had a very strong impact on them, really. We are facing one or more major imbalances ”, specifies the lawyer.

Say #CuriousCat @CuriousCatMe is still a big problem on your network.
WILL YOU FINALLY do something against the cyber harassment suffered for several days / weeks by thousands of your users OR GOOD? pic.twitter.com/pRZ4FkXW6j

According to him, confinement has multiplied the phenomena of cyberbullying. “We noted a kind of idleness on the part of certain individuals which increased during this period, a kind of enjoyment of arousing fear. A certain number of messages - which could go up to 100 to 200 per day - also made direct reference to confinement, ”specifies Me Morain. The lawyer also deplores the difficulties his clients had to face in order to be heard. “It is a recurring problem. Police and gendarmes tend to evacuate these cases out of hand. This is due to a lack of training and knowledge. There is still a huge amount of work to do, ”he notes. The information and communication service of the national police (Sicop) for its part clarified that the judicial police had received "15 reports concerning CuriousCat since January, which is little compared to the flow received daily via the Pharos specialized platform ”.

The Secretary of State for Equality between women and men, Marlène Schiappa, also took up this subject by calling on CuriousCat. "Platforms must take responsibility," she wrote on Twitter, noting that cyberbullying in packs is now punished with three years in prison. The social network CuriousCat explained that it was unable to block the harassers due to anonymity. "This is why we collaborate with the police by providing them with all the data we have on the stalkers," said the platform.

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• Insult
• Death threats
• Social media
• Bullying
• Cyber ​​harassment
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• Violence
• Sequestration
• Rape
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