Athlete Jimmy Gressier targeted by investigation for sexual harassment

A report was made by the director general of the National Institute of Sport in October 2023. The person concerned “disputes the facts”.

The French 5,000m record holder is in the sights of justice. Jimmy Gressier, 26, is targeted by a preliminary investigation for sexual harassment, franceinfo learned from the Paris prosecutor’s office on Tuesday February 6, confirming information from the newspaper The Team. This investigation was opened following a report “under article 40” of the Code of Criminal Procedure, carried out by the director general of the National Institute of Sport (Insep) in October 2023, specified this same source. The investigations were entrusted to the police station in the 12th arrondissement of Paris.

According to The TeamClaire Palou, formerhope of French athletics in the 3,000 m steeplechase, is at the origin of these accusations. After her appearance in the podcast “Champions of the World”, denouncing rape and sexual assault suffered between the ages of 14 and 19, the young woman, now aged 21, was heard by Fabien Canu, the director of Insep , and the French Athletics Federation (FFA). It is in this context, according to the sports daily, that she claimed to have also been the victim of sexual harassment on the part of Jimmy Gressier.

Jimmy Gressier “disputes the facts”

In a testimony to franceinfo, last May, Claire Palou mentioned “sexual harassment” suffered “during the first months of 2021 (…) from an athlete from the French team, who was part of my training group at Insep”. Without naming Jimmy Gressier, she declared : “He made lots of comments about my physique, about what turned him on about my body. One day, he told me that he wanted to ‘eat my ass’. He then threatened me to stop me to talk about it, that ‘it was going to go badly for me’ and that he could ‘get me out of Insep’. I felt permanent stress.”

Despite the absence of complaint from Claire Palou, Fabien Canu explains to The Team having decided to make a report : “I wrote a preparatory letter to trigger it at the beginning of August. It was reread by my deputies and sent to the prosecutor.” For his part, Jimmy Gressier “disputes the facts” which he is accused of, his lawyer reacted to AFP.