TheQuartering [7/7/2021]
It seems harsh for a single video.
Hours after she posted her last video on her Twitter account on Tuesday, the Mexican YouTuber Yoseline Hoffman, known as “YosStop,” was arrested at her house by officers in Mexico City on charges of child pornography. The detention came three months after Ainara Suárez reported Hoffman for reproducing, storing and publicizing a video that showed a gang rape she had suffered in May 2018. The detainee, aged 30, admitted in one of her YouTube videos that she had seen the recording of the Suárez’s sexual assault, commenting that the incident had been her fault and calling her a “slut.” The Hoffman case has caused waves within the world of Mexico’s social media influencers and prompted debate over the limits of freedom of expression.
On March 3, Suárez filed a complaint against four men for a sexual assault. She was 16 at the time of the attack. In the same complaint, she accused the men of child pornography, as well as a friend to whom a video of the assault was sent and Hoffman. Of the six people named in her accusations, only Hoffman has been arrested so far. The case was escalated to a national level after the YouTuber became involved – she counts on 5.6 million subscribers on her channel and videos that have racked up nearly 10 million views.
Suárez’s nightmare dates back to May 25, 2018. In an interview granted to EL PAÍS shortly after she filed the complaint, the youngster explained the hell she had been through over the preceding three years. That night Suárez attended a party, at which four men inserted a bottle of champagne into her vagina. They recorded their actions and sent the video to their friends and posted it on social media. The case became even more controversial when YosStop discussed the recording and insulted the victim during a video released to her millions of followers. The scene of a minor, completely nude, and being assaulted by a number of young men quickly circulated via all kinds of pornography websites.
From that moment on, a harassment campaign began against the victim. Speaking to friends and via social media, the young men involved in the video claimed that Suárez had agreed to participate in the sex act in exchange for cigarettes. Suárez had to deal with death threats, insults and taunts, which she has included in her complaint. At the time of these events, she was still an adolescent and had not even told her family what was going on. She would do so months later, after having gone to therapy with a psychologist.
The attacks on social media continued until, some days later, there was a brawl in a park in the south of the city, during which Suárez was badly beaten by a group of girls. Dozens of people filmed the assault, which also went viral. In the midst of this battle between minors, who had been exchanging hate messages via their most commonly used social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, Hoffman waded into the controversy.