Their names are Hélène, Stéphanie, Camille, Muriel, Charlotte, Marie-Laure, Clémence, Emmanuelle, Nora, Karine, Aude, Margot, Chloé, Caroline, Florence, Justine, Camille, Cécile, Anouk and Armelle. They are 20. 20 among the 26 women who testified in court against Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, for rape, assault or sexual harassment. Two of them were minors at the time. They all agreed to participate together in a special issue of « A l’air libre », Mediapart’s daily program, recorded Monday morning and put online this Tuesday evening.
Some like Florence Porcel, whose complaint launched the PPDA affair in February 2021, have already recounted their attacks in the columns of « Parisien ». Others had never expressed themselves in the media so far, such as Margot Cauquil-Gleizes, who speaks with emotion: “This is the first time that I have testified publicly (…). Being here today, with my face uncovered, is a way of telling him that I am not afraid and that I stand by my testimony that he raped me when I was 17 and sexually assaulted me. in his office at the age of 24”, says this teacher, in the introductory round table. She explains coming out of anonymity in reaction to the filing of a complaint filed on April 26 by the former star of the JT for slanderous denunciation against 16 of the 22 women who testified against him with the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person ( BRDP).
“It’s hard for any of us to talk about this. These are intimate things that we do not want to tell at all. We don’t want to be there, don’t want to need to say it publicly, declares Hélène Devynck straight away. It’s simply the violence of Patrick Poivre d’Arvor that makes us have to do it. He filed a complaint against 16 of us. All of us here have gone to tell our stories to Justice. Justice, for the moment, has done nothing about it. She dismissed us. What we come to tell you is what Justice knows and also the violence it is to testify, ”adds the journalist who worked alongside the former presenter of 20 Heures de la Une in the 1990s. , and who filed a rape complaint against him, for facts that date back to 1993.
A Cannes Film Festival that left a traumatic memory
Emotion and anger follow one another over the 2:25 hours of this program with the air of a media response. Intimate wounds and shattered lives are obvious. Like those of Caroline who participates in the back show so as not to be recognized. In June 1988, she was 16 when PPDA abused her. Among the other testimonies hitherto unknown, that of Marie-Laure Eude-Delattre, who took legal action last December.
At the age of 23, she was raped on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival, at the Martinez hotel where the presenter was staying. « Until the end I thought I was going to have a drink on the terrace to have an internship at France 2. And in fact I found myself in his room », explains this « little perky and naive intern ». It took 36 years to go to court. “I dreamed of being a press attaché and above all an actress, of playing Phèdre. That was my ambition, not to sleep with this man. (…) He told me We can talk about that after the movie. It was a 12:30 a.m. session, ”recalls the one who is not sure that he knew his first name.
After finding him in the hall of the palace, she followed him into the elevator, then into the corridors. “He locked the door and afterwards I saw him stark naked rubbing himself on his couch. I told him No I don’t want to, I didn’t come for that. (…) A moment of amazement followed, I did not move. He took off my pants and my panties. (…) That’s not seduction. Just a piece of meat, I need it, I take it and I’m leaving. At the end, I took my little things, he opened the door for me and I left. “Explains the one who claims to have spoken of this story” to everyone “in his entourage.
Presumed innocent, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor once again strongly contests all these allegations. In February 2021, journalist Florence Porcel filed a rape complaint against PPDA. This first legal action was dismissed due to « insufficient evidence », but a new complaint with civil action filed with the dean of the Nanterre investigating judges led to the opening of an investigation. court on acts allegedly committed from 2009, and which are not time-barred. Two new complaints for sexual assault and rape were registered at the end of December for facts in 1985 and 2013. And another at the end of April. To date, a total of sixteen women have filed a complaint against Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, including six for rape.