Credits: Télé Matin – France Télévisions / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY 3.0.
On February 4, 2026, in her podcast Sipsters, Paola Locatelli says she was contacted in private messages as a minor by footballers and actors when she was 14–15 years old. At 21, the influencer turned actress describes a sexualization of a minor. She explains that adults allegedly took advantage of her fame and vulnerability. She refuses to name names, saying she could “ruin careers.” At this stage, no complaint or legal proceedings are mentioned.
Paola Locatelli, Internet Child Turned Actress
First comes a simple image: a teenager in front of a screen. Blue light on her face, a thumb scrolling through a thread of messages. Compliments. Innuendo. And sometimes, in the middle, the implicit signature of a status: “I’m famous.” It’s this scene that Paola Locatelli says she now reads differently.
Born in 2004, she became known very young on YouTube, then built a massive presence on social networks. Numbers became a common language: nearly 2 million followers on Instagram, communities that comment, judge, and attach themselves. Over time, adolescence is no longer just an age: it’s a public setting.
She also crossed into film and TV. The big screen, auditions, the carpets where people smile. This dual identity, influencer and actress, creates a particular kind of celebrity: closer, more accessible, more “contactable.” A private account is never entirely private when surrounded by an audience.
In Sipsters, she explains that at 14–15, she didn’t realize the significance of what she was experiencing. She says she believed herself to be “grown up.” However, with hindsight, she discovers the abyssal distance between the projected image and the reality of being a minor. Her phrase hits because it reduces fame to an obvious fact: “I was a baby.”
She places this account under a heavy word: “hypersexualization.” And she associates it with a specific period: when the body changes, when looks change, when puberty becomes, despite oneself, an announcement.
DMs, The New Dark Alley of Social Media
On adolescents’ social networks, everything seems accessible. Social networks promise a flat world, without doors. Anyone can talk to anyone. In reality, there’s an architecture: the public square on one side, and behind it, the alley of DMs, private messages, where you can try anything without witnesses.
Paola Locatelli says these messages came from adults she presents as professional athletes and actors. She does not name them. She simply states: “I was getting DMs from all the footballers, even actors.” In the same breath, she adds: “if I say the names, I can ruin careers.”
The expression is not only a threat. It’s an admission about the imbalance. At 14, you don’t have a legal team or a communications department. On the other side, there would be established adults, if her account is accurate. They are protected by the habit of silence and the idea that “it stays private.”
She also says something more intimate: the search for validation. The trap is there: a sexual manipulation of a minor that presents itself as validation. A message from a “grownup” can seem like a diploma. You laugh about it with friends. You tell the story. You think you’ve gained power, while you’re giving it away.
This mechanism is familiar to the attention economy. The body, intimacy, and youth become assets. Influence is not just a job: it’s a market where authenticity is monetized, exposure becomes currency, and age is blurred by filters and poses.
In this system, the line between admiration and online sexual predation can blur very quickly. Comments are public, so monitored. DMs, however, are a closed room. That is precisely what Paola Locatelli denounces: the idea that one can “try” because no one sees.
At this stage, a clear line must be held: these are public statements, with no identified persons, without elements made verifiable in the media sphere. The account describes a climate. It is not, by itself, sufficient to establish facts in the judicial sense.
What French Law Says About Online Sexual Solicitation
The law does not talk about algorithms or stories. It talks about age, asymmetry, protection.
In France, Article 227-22-1 of the Penal Code provides 2 years of imprisonment and €30,000 in fines. This applies when an adult makes sexual propositions to a minor under 15 years old. This is done via an electronic communication method. Penalties can be increased to 5 years and €75,000 when the propositions are followed by a meeting.
This legal reminder often appears in articles because it corresponds to a concrete act: writing to a child behind a screen. The text was not designed to punish awkward flirting between adolescents. It targets the adult who uses digital means to approach a minor, in other words, a power imbalance.
But the law does not move forward without material. You need elements, screenshots, a chronology, identities. In the case mentioned by Paola Locatelli, names are not given. And no proceedings are publicly mentioned at this stage.
That is where the debate becomes heated: can media speech act as an alert when the judicial route is not taken? And conversely, can justice act without a complaint, without a report, without assembled evidence?
The digital complicates everything. Messages disappear, accounts change, platforms archive without always making access easy. And shame often works in silence. Many former minors tell the same thing: in the moment, you don’t realize. The shock comes later.
To understand the importance of age, a reference is often cited: the age of sexual majority in France is set at 15 years. That doesn’t say everything about consent, but it sets a protective barrier.
“Ruin Careers” Without Naming: The Tightrope Between Speech and Justice
The most delicate moment in Paola Locatelli’s account comes down to one sentence. Saying you could “ruin careers” suggests power. But it also describes a risk: tipping into accusation without the possibility of contradiction, and without the safeguards an investigation provides.
The tension is twofold.
On one hand, silence often protects the powerful. Not naming names avoids a trial, yes. But it also leaves potential practices intact, if they existed. Speech, even incomplete, can serve as a signal: “what happens in DMs is not trivial.”
On the other hand, naming without exposed proof opens the door to defamation and the court of social media. Justice requires time, facts, and contradictions. Social networks demand reactions, camps, and blows.
For now, Paola Locatelli chooses a third path: recounting the experience, labeling the men “pedophiles” in her words, and refusing to go further. She also recounts what, in her view, makes the situation more serious: “I was 14, everyone knew it.” In other words, no ambiguity about age.
So what to do with the phrase: “I can ruin careers”? It expresses the fear of a domino effect. It also describes a world where prestige can be overturned in a second. In the celebrity universe, suspicion is a stain. In the world of minors, suspicion is sometimes a cry.
Collective responsibility may begin here: reminding that private messages are not a free zone. That an adult should not seek out a minor, even “famous,” even “mature” in appearance, even staged. And that early fame does not turn a child into an adult.
Pending any reports of online grooming, investigations, or proceedings, none of which are public at this stage, the affair mostly says this: a generation grows up under camera eyes, and some adults still believe access is a right. DMs retain the trace of an era. And sometimes, crimes: sexual abuse of minors. Sometimes, only abuses of power. Always, a power imbalance.
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