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 notoriety and vulnerability. She refuses to name names, saying she could “destroy careers.” At this stage, no complaint or legal procedure is mentioned.
Paola Locatelli, Internet Child Turned Actress
First there is a simple image: a teenager in front of a screen. The blue light on the face, the thumb scrolling through a message thread. Compliments. Innuendo. And sometimes, in the middle, the implicit signature of a status: “I’m famous.” It’s this scene that Paola Locatelli now says she 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, attach themselves. Over time, adolescence is no longer just an age: it’s a public set.
She also crossed into film and series. The big screen, auditions, red carpets where you 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 did not grasp the scope of what she was experiencing. She says she felt “grown up.” However, she discovers, in hindsight, the abyssal gap between the projected image and the reality of a minor. Her phrase hits because it reduces fame to a simple fact: “I was a baby.”
She frames this story under a heavy word: “sexualization.” And she associates it with a specific period: the moment the body changes, when looks change, when puberty becomes, despite oneself, an announcement.
DMs, The New Dark Alley of Social Networks
On teen social networks, everything seems accessible. Social networks promise a flat world, no doors. Anyone can talk to anyone. In reality, there is an architecture: the public square on one side, and behind it, the alley of DMs, private messages, where anything can be attempted 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 DMed by every footballer, even actors.” In the same breath, she adds: “if I say the names, I can destroy careers.”
The expression is not only a threat. It’s an admission about the imbalance. At 14, you have no legal team, no communications department. Opposite you, if her account is accurate, would be established adults. They are protected by the habit of silence and by 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 “grown-up” can seem like a diploma. You laugh about it with friends. You tell stories. You think you gain power, while you give it away.
This mechanism is familiar in the attention economy. The body, intimacy, youth become assets. Influence is not just a job: it’s a market where authenticity is monetized, where exposure becomes currency, where age blurs under filters and poses.
In this system, the line between admiration and online sexual predation can blur very quickly. Comments are public, therefore monitored. DMs, they 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, without identified people, without elements verifiable in the media space. The account describes a climate. It is not, by itself, sufficient to establish facts in the judicial sense.
What French Law Says About Sexual Solicitation Online
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’ imprisonment and €30,000 fine. 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 raised to 5 years and €75,000 when the propositions are followed by a meeting.
This legal reminder frequently appears in articles because it corresponds to a concrete gesture: writing to a child behind a screen. The text was not designed to punish clumsy 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 advance without material. You need elements, screenshots, a chronology, identities. In the case evoked by Paola Locatelli, names are not given. And no procedure is publicly mentioned at this stage.
This is where the debate becomes heated: can media speech act as an alert when the judicial path is not taken? And, conversely, can justice act without a complaint, without a report, without constituted evidence?
Digital complicates everything. Messages disappear, accounts change, platforms archive without always facilitating access. And shame often works in silence. Many former minors tell the same thing: at the time, you don’t realize. The shock comes later.
To understand the issue of age, a reference point is often cited: the age of sexual majority in France is set at 15 years. That does not say everything about consent, but it establishes a protective barrier.
“Destroy Careers” Without Naming: The Tightrope Between Speech and Justice
The most delicate moment in Paola Locatelli’s account is summed up in one sentence. Saying you could “destroy careers” suggests power. But it also describes a risk: falling into accusation without possibility of contradiction, and without the guarantees an investigation provides.
The tension is twofold.
On one hand, silence often protects the more powerful. Not naming 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 to the court of social networks. Justice requires time, facts, contradictions. Social networks demand reactions, camps, blows.
Paola Locatelli chooses, for now, a third way: tell the experience, label the men as “pedophiles” in her words, and refuse to go further. She also recounts what, in her eyes, 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 destroy careers”? It expresses the fear of a domino effect. It also indicates the existence of a world where prestige can flip 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 there: 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 notoriety does not make a child an adult.
Pending possible reports of online grooming, investigations or procedures, none of which are public at this stage, the case mainly says this: a generation grows up under cameras’ eyes, and some adults still believe access is a right. DMs, they keep the record of an era. And sometimes, crimes: sexual abuse of minors. Sometimes, only abuses of power. Always, a power imbalance.