Ten French citizens have been found guilty of online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. The convictions relate to claims that the French First Lady is secretly transgender and that the couple’s relationship began as pedophilic grooming.
The people convicted range in age from 41 through to 60 and come from a wide variety of backgrounds including a school sports teacher, a publicist and a gallery owner. Their sentences range from attending an online training program about harassment, to an eight month suspended prison sentence.
One offender, a property developer who did not attend the court hearing, was given a six month jail sentence in absentia. Many of the offenders were banned the social media platforms that they had made the comments on.
The case related to people who had made comments falsely arguing that Brigitte Macron was born male, and is secretly transgender. Additionally some of those convicted had made claims that the couple’s age difference and previous teacher-student relationship was a sign of pedophilia.
The internet conspiracy theory suggests that Macron was born male and was originally named Jean-Michel Trogneux – which is the name of her brother.
Brigitte Macron first met her now husband when he was a teenager and she ran a theatre workshop at his high school. She is 24 years older than her husband. Years after the couple first met she divorced her first husband and married Macron the following year. She has three children from her previous marriage and seven grand children.
While Brigitte Macron did not testify at the trial, her 41 year old daughter Tiphaine Auzière spoke about the effect the harassment had on her mother. She described how the constant accusations had left Macron worried about what she wore, and how she conducted herself in public.
The French case is separate to a civil legal case the couple have launched in the USA against right-wing podcaster Candace Owens who has fueled the conspiracy theory. Owens has claimed that she’ll stake her entire professional reputation on the claim, and subsequently authored a eight-part podcast on her belief that Macron is secretly transgender.
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