SEXUAL VIOLENCE – “At first I said to myself, I’m not going to say anything. It’s not ok, this cover, but we’re talking about us at least […] But it’s not okay. It does not go through ». It is with these words that Cécile Delarue, journalist and author, reacted to the front page of Paris Match, published this Thursday, April 7. The magazine title on the cover: “PPDA, his new life as an outcast”.
On Twitter, Cécile Delarue, who had denounced in the pages of Release the sexual harassment she had suffered from the presenter of TF1, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, recalled the reality faced by victims of sexual violence in France. “It was sent to me from everywhere, this Une […]. There is this man who walks in the street and who is therefore in photo in all the kiosks of France”, she alerted.
“I have no pleasure in once again having to speak publicly, and open it up in front of you all. But really, all this is not possible. This is all too unfair,” she insisted.
Reduced to the “media court”
« It says that a man accused of a crime by dozens of women, sorry, by dozens and dozens of women, can still walk quietly today in the streets of our beautiful France », underlined the journalist inviting all those who pass in front of this Front page to think of the “others”, “terribly numerous, who pass in front of it and see again and again what they may have suffered from this person”.
“It’s unfair that they are reduced to this ‘media court’, because they no longer have a right to court at all. It’s too late. It’s prescribed. It does not change that it is disgusting”, continued the journalist.
Five months after the start of the PPDA case, in February 2021, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office had decided to close the preliminary investigation for rape targeting the TV presenter without further action, judging the facts reported prescribed or insufficiently qualified.
Only two investigations are ongoing today. On December 17, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office indicated that it was launching an investigation following the rape complaint by the writer Florence Porcel. A second investigation had been opened in parallel, again for rape, after a complaint filed by a woman accusing PPDA of having raped her during the Cannes Film Festival in 1985, when she was 23 years old.
The TF1 host has always firmly denied the accusations against him and has benefited in particular from the support of his colleague Jean-Pierre Pernaut, and his ex-girlfriend and colleague Claire Chazal.
“There is not a week without me speaking to a new woman who tells terrifying facts” assures Cécile Delarue for her part. “I am thinking today of the one who told me that for decades she could not bear to have the TV turned on in the evening at 8 p.m. for fear of seeing the face of her rapist on it” she said. added.
Multiple reactions
Since the publication of the weekly, several other personalities have also expressed themselves on the social network. France Inter journalist Giulia Foïs, who in her book “I am one in two” recounted the rape suffered at the age of 20, judged the coverage of Paris Match particularly violent. “One day I saw the face of the man who raped me on the front page of a newspaper. As an epigraph, he said: “I’ve had my life screwed up”. It was in the little kiosk at the TGV station. I read, I wanted to throw myself under a train. Otherwise, it’s fine, your editorial choice”, she wrote on her Twitter account.
Writer and journalist Adrien Borne said he was “looking forward to a front page and a 4-page article on what becomes of the women who have spoken out courageously!”. He then completed: “Do you remember? Do you remember their name? […] Nothing will change until the point of view changes”. “Get out the handkerchiefs good people. Her life has become so sad. The victims? Well, we don’t care”, gloomily quipped the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau.
On April 28, France 2 will broadcast a number of Further investigation presented by Tristan Waleckx, which should focus among others on Patrick Poivre d’Arvor. A documentary entitled “the fall of an untouchable”.
See also on Le HuffPost: ”#MeTooPolitique: why speech struggles to free itself”
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