Paris. Who is Bastien Vivès, comic book author accused of child pornography

The case has gone beyond the stage of controversy. Monday, December 19, 2022, the association Innocence in danger which fights against all forms of violence against children and based in Parisfiled a complaint against Bastien Vives. The comic book author is accused of promoting I’incest and the pedophilia.

Who hides behind the lines of Polina, Corto Maltese or Little Paul ?

An exhibition that provokes the ire of child protection associations

It is the organization by the Angoulême comic strip festival of an exhibition devoted to his work which set fire to the powder. “Outraged that we are rolling out the red carpet for him”, Laetitia Abad Estieu and Alice Pfaltzertwo feminist activists, unearthed boards and interviews of Bastien Vivès.

Came out from the interviews and posts published under pseudonyms and at the very least problematic. On a forum, he wrote in 2005: “Sometimes I feel attracted to girls of 10 or 12 (…) of course, I don’t do anything, but it’s a human feeling that everyone can have”.

In a 2017 interview with the site miss (withdrawn since), he launched: “Incest excites me to death (…) since I can’t do incest in real life and I don’t have a big sister to be able to do that, I do that in my books. »

“I would like one of her kids to stab her”

In the book The Mental Dumppublished in 2018, the author presents a incestuous family. In this story, a fifteen-year-old girl and a ten-year-old girl are staged in sexual acts. In addition to his drawings, some of his remarks have been denounced, in particular the messages addressed to Emmaauthor of should have askedon the mental load.

“I would like one of her kids to stab her (…). We should kill his kid and that would solve the problem, ”he wrote under the pseudonym Bastien Vivaldi. Defamatory comments for which he apologized more than a year after the fact, in the heart of the turmoil.

Accused of disseminating child pornography

A second book is under fire from critics. In Little Paul, a comic telling the story of a ten-year-old child whose sex is disproportionate, the boy is raped by different characters throughout the story. Already upon its release, the work had been the subject of a reporting to the court, filed away.

The complaint filed this Monday by Innocence in danger, and whose RMC has had access, concerns three of his works: The Mental Dump, The melons of anger and Little Paul. It focuses on three offences: “dissemination of child pornography images”, “incitement to commit sexual assaults on minors” and “dissemination to a minor of violent messages”. Publishing houses Glenat and Les Requins Marteaux are also affected by the complaint.

As a reminder, Law 227-23 of the Criminal Code stipulates that “the fact, with a view to its dissemination, of fixing, recording or transmitting the image or representation of a minor when this image or this representation presents a pornographic character shall be punished with five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros. »

Who is Bastien Vives?

Born in 1984 to a film set painter father and an accountant mother, he grew up in the neighborhood of Lyon station in Paris. He studied at the Saint-Geneviève Institute, in the 6th arrondissement, then trained at the Penninghen Graphic Arts School in the heart of the Saint-Germain district.

Bastien Vivès then studied animation cinema at Gobelins, in the 13th district. In 2007, he co-founded the Manjari workshop in the 11th. The same year, he published his first comic strip, They).

Author of The taste of chlorine – who received the Révélation prize at the Angoulême festival in 2009, Polina or evenA sisteradapted in 2022 by Charlotte LeBonhe resumed directing Corto Maltese, iconic character invented by Hugo Pratt. In September 2022, he published Last weekend of January.

Go beyond the controversy to open the debate

In addition to the controversy, the BeBraveFrance movement which fights against sexual violence against children and which is at the origin of a petition which collected more than 110,000 signaturescalls for a social debate.

“The time when the artists were doingapology for child crime must be completed in France. It’s time forEmmanuel Macron walks the talk about his intention to build the fight against incest among the great national causes,” write Arnaud Gallais and Mié Kohiyama, co-founder and co-founder of BeBraveFrance.

After the cancellation of his exhibition at the Angoulême Festival, Bastien Vivès spoke in an Instagram post.

I condemn pedocrime, as well as its apology and its trivialization. I condemn the culture of rape and violence against women (…). Under no circumstances should my books be read through the prism of complacency towards these crimes.

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