French First Lady Brigitte Macron has been awarded damages over the viral false claim that she is a transgender man named Jean-Michel.
A Paris court on Thursday ordered two women to pay £6,750 in damages to the 71-year-old after making the claims that sparked online rumour-mongering by conspiracy theorists and the far right.
Macron filed a libel complaint against the two women – self-proclaimed spiritual medium Amandine Roy and conspiracy theorist Natacha Rey – who posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging she had once been a man named ‘Jean-Michel’.
The claim went viral just weeks before the 2022 presidential election.
Posts spread on social media claiming that the first lady, formerly Brigitte Trogneux, had never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and assumed that identity.
French First Lady Brigitte Macron has been awarded £6,750 in damages over the viral false claim that she is a transgender man
Self-proclaimed spiritual medium Amandine Roy posted a four-hour video to YouTube allowing a conspiracy theorist to make the false claims
Conspiracy theorist Natacha Rey (pictured) claimed that Brigitte Macron was born a man
A Paris court sentenced the two defendants to pay a total of £6,750 in damages to the president’s wife, and £4,200 to her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux. Macron had initially demanded £8,400 in compensation.
The pair were also handed a suspended fine of £420.
Macron, and her French president husband Emmanuel Macron did not attend the trial in June and were not present for the ruling.
The medium, Roy, 49, had interviewed Rey for hours on her YouTube channel in which she ranted about the ‘state lie’ and ‘scam’ that she claimed to have uncovered.
Rey was ‘desperate to share her work’, said Roy, who had merely ‘acquiesced to her request’.
Despite this claim of acquiescing to Rey, Roy said the conspiracist ‘had spent three years researching, it’s not like she pulled it out of her hat’.
‘My regret is that this wasn’t taken up and investigated by the mainstream media,’ said Roy, who said she could not ‘hide’ such a ‘serious’ subject.
The disinformation even spread to the United States where Brigitte Macron was attacked in a now deleted YouTube video ahead of the November elections.
‘The prejudice is massive, it exploded everywhere,’ said Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi at the time.
Rey was ill during the trial, but did not manage to have it postponed.
In March, the French president expressed his anger and frustration about continual speculation of his wife, whom he married in 2007.
Macron, and her French president husband Emmanuel Macron did not attend the trial in June and were not present for the ruling
Emmanuel Macron, President of France, and Brigitte Macron enjoy the show during the closing ceremony on day eleven of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games at Stade de France on September 08, 2024
On Thursday, Brigitte Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series ‘Emily in Paris’
‘The worst thing is the false information and fabricated scenarios,’ he said.
‘People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your intimacy.’
He said the transgender claims about Macron were typical of misogynisitic online attacks that women have to put up with every day.
Details of the bizarre case were revived after her own daughter talked publicly about the accusations for the first time.
Tiphaine Auzière, 40, told Paris Match magazine: ‘I have concerns about the level of society when I hear what is circulating on social networks about my mother being a man.’
Auzière also discussed how wounded she remained after discovering as a 10-year-old child that her teacher mother was seeing the teenage Emmanuel Macron.
The future politician was just 15 when he began a relationship with the then married mother-of-three Brigitte Auzière, who was 40 at the time, and teaching drama at La Providence high school in Amiens, northern France.
Former US first lady Michelle Obama, US Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris and New Zealand ex-premier Jacinda Ardern have also been the target of disinformation about their gender or sexuality in a bid to mock or humiliate them.
Also on Thursday, Brigitte Macron made her Netflix debut playing herself in the hit series ‘Emily in Paris’.
The show’s star Lily Collins told Elle magazine the idea came to her and programme creator Darren Star when they met the first lady at the Elysee Palace in December 2022.
