Two French men were convicted of aggravated violence on 5 August 2026 in connection with the death of streamer Raphaël Graven, who died during a live broadcast on the Kick platform in August 2025. Safine Hamadi received an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a €5,000 fine, while Owen Cenazandotti received a two-year suspended sentence and a €15,000 fine, according to Reuters and the BBC. A suspended sentence means the convicted person does not go to prison unless they commit another offense within a set period.

Graven, 46, was found dead in Contes, a village north of Nice, in August 2025. Known online as Jean Pormanove, he had more than one million followers across his social media platforms. His death followed what the French newspaper Le Monde described as a 12-day marathon of abuse that was broadcast live on Kick, an Australia-based streaming platform. A livestream on 18 August 2025 showed Graven lying lifeless on a mattress covered with a duvet. The video was later removed from Kick.

Neither Hamadi nor Cenazandotti was charged with manslaughter — the crime of causing someone's death through negligence or reckless behavior without intent to kill. The prosecution determined that the probable causes of death appeared related to Graven's poor health and fragile heart, as the BBC reported. A French prosecutor had previously stated in September 2025 that Graven likely died of medical causes rather than foul play, according to France 24.

The court acquitted both men of the charge of abusing Graven's psychological frailty — a French legal concept that covers exploiting someone's mental vulnerability. Graven had told police before his death that he consented to the stunts and humiliation that formed part of his content. Hamadi and Cenazandotti maintained that Graven consented to the abuse and humiliation depicted in his streams.

In addition to the suspended sentences and fines, both men were each banned from posting on Kick for six months.

The case has drawn scrutiny not only to the individuals involved but to the platform that hosted the broadcasts. France announced in August 2025 that it would sue Kick for negligence following Graven's death, as reported by RFI. By January 2026, French prosecutors had requested arrest warrants for managers of the Australian streaming service, according to France 24. Two French streamers were taken into custody that same month. Kick remains under investigation by French authorities.

The legal outcome here turns on a narrow but consequential distinction in French criminal law. The court recognized that violence occurred, that it was broadcast, and that a man died in the course of it. Yet the causal chain — the direct link between the abuse and the death — was deemed insufficient for a manslaughter charge. The prosecution's own assessment, that Graven's pre-existing cardiac fragility was the probable cause of death, foreclosed that avenue. What remained prosecutable was the aggravated violence itself, and the sentences reflect that narrower charge.

The consent defense adds a further layer of complexity. Graven's own statements to police, made before his death, that he consented to the stunts, were sufficient to defeat the charge of exploiting psychological frailty. This raises difficult questions about the limits of consent as a legal shield in content production that involves sustained physical mistreatment, particularly when the consenting party is in a manifestly vulnerable state. French law, like many European systems, recognizes that consent can block certain charges but does not treat it as absolute, particularly where harm is serious. The court's decision here suggests the threshold for psychological exploitation was not met, even as the threshold for aggravated violence was.

The broader context here is that the ongoing investigation into Kick may carry more weight than the individual sentences. France's decision to pursue negligence claims and arrest warrants against platform managers signals an appetite for holding streaming services to a duty-of-care standard — a legal obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent harm — that goes beyond reactive content moderation, meaning removing content only after complaints. If French authorities proceed with the negligence case, it could establish a precedent for platform liability in jurisdictions where live content is consumed in real time, with limited capacity for pre-publication review. The outcome of that investigation, still unresolved, may carry implications well beyond this single case.