Cannes choreographer Bruno Vandelli was sentenced this Friday to a one-year suspended prison sentence for corruption of a minor by the Grasse criminal court. He is also prohibited from exercising a profession related to young audiences for a period of three years. Her ex-husband Jessy Bourgeois was sentenced to eight months’ suspended imprisonment.
The two men were prosecuted for having exchanged pornographic photos and videos with a teenager between 2016 and 2017, when the victim, whom they had met during dance classes, was 14 and then 15 years old, the legal age of sexual consent.
He thought the young man was older
During the hearing on April 17, Bruno Vandelli assured that he thought the young man was older and that all communication had stopped when the couple learned his age. The young man, who is now 22 years old but remains “very affected” according to his lawyer Kaltoum Gachi, was not present at the hearing. It was his mother, also a civil party, who came to testify.
Co-founder of the “Espace 2 Vandelli-Masson” dance school in Cannes, Bruno Vandelli, 62, has become a television personality. He was a juror on the show “Popstars 2” on M6 in 2002.
In January, one of his former students, Yanis Marshall, himself a former dance teacher on the show “Star Academy” on TF1, announced that he had filed a complaint against him for “rape” and “corruption of a minor”, for acts dating back to his adolescence.
In an interview with the regional daily Nice-Matin, Bruno Vandelli denounced “lies and slander”, acknowledging a relationship with his former student but describing it as a “love story” consensual when the young dancer was 16 and he was 44.
