A Top Pixar And Disney Animator Awaits Trial In France On Child Sex Abuse Charges
Bolhem Bouchiba, a key veteran of Disney and Pixar animation studios, is currently awaiting trial in Paris. He is accused of having ordered the rape of hundreds of young girls in the Philippines through live streaming.
Prior to his arrest, Bouchiba, 59, had been a key animator at Disney and Pixar for decades. At Disney, he was an animator on Esmerelda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hades in Hercules, and the title character of Tarzan, as well as supervising animator of Jumba in Lilo & Stitch. He also animated on the Oscar-nominated shorts Lorenzo and Runaway Brain.
At Pixar, Bouchiba animated on The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Up. He was often involved early in projects to help figure out how characters in move, and in Ratatouille, he played an important role in the early shots of Remy teaching Linguini how to cook. More recently, he had worked in story and development on Soul, Incredibles 2, Luca, and Elemental. On Luca, one artist on the film credited him with helping to define Luca’s movement and how to “appealingly group his tail and limb for maximum flow.”
His illustrious animation career also includes story credits on Dreamworks’s How to Train Your Dragon films, animating on the Oscar-winning short Dear Basketball, and storyboarding on Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia. In a Cartoon Brew interview, Bouchiba was praised for his work on developing the “Forbidden Friendship” sequence in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, started investigating Bouchiba in 2019, when they noticed suspicious movements of funds to the Philippines, according to an exclusive report in Le Figaro, France’s oldest and second-largest national newspaper. The investigation revealed that he had been paying for remote sexual abuse of minors, aged three to fifteen years old. The number of live streams that he conducted number in the hundreds and could reach as many as a thousand children, according to investigators.
Bouchiba had previously been arrested and convicted in 2014 for sexually assaulting the eight-year-old daughter of his partner at the time. He received a two-year suspended sentence at the time. It was discovered during that first criminal case that he had viewed child pornography. The sexual assault conviction did not affect his animation prospects and afterwards he continued to work regularly on Pixar animated features and was hired by Glen Keane to animate on Dear Basketball, among other assignments.
Bouchiba, who referred to children as “pigs” admitted during his interrogations that the children whose abuse he ordered were “scared” and often crying. “It’s horrible what’s happening to them,” he said, “and I think they express it to the adult and the adult, most of the time, doesn’t stop.”
More details on Bouchiba’s actions can be found in the original Figaro report. Suffice to say, the acts were barbaric and depraved beyond comprehension, and unnecessary to reprint here.
His trial is set to take place October 29-31. If found guilty, Bouchiba could serve up to twenty years in prison.
