This is a question that comes up regularly: when a woman accuses a man of sexual violence, we wonder about the fact that it took several years, dozens, to speak out. This is again the case for the new report byCorrespondent of France 2 on Nicolas Hulot, broadcast this November 25, 2021. The antiquity of the facts, now prescribed, sheds light on the decision that these women have taken to free their speech, so many years after what they describe as assaults. The three plaintiffs who appear in the investigation of the magazine Elise Lucet are unanimous: it takes time to dare to speak and attack the powerful and influential icon that was the former minister and presenter. In addition, knowing that you are not the only one also gives you the strength to go into an uphill battle.
Firstly there is Sylvia, who wants to put an end to more than thirty years of silence because the secret is too heavy to bear. She didn’t speak before because she had 16 at the time and he 34, she was a television star, the one Ushuaia that viewers watched every Saturday. We are in 1989 and he would have asked her for a blowjob in an overhead parking lot, while he was driving her back after a radio program on France Inter. Sylvia knows that the facts are prescribed and unverifiable: “I have no proof. I don’t attack anyone. “When she dares to tell her mother about it, she also asks herself, why now? She then measures the courage it took for her daughter to dare to reveal this story and she understands, for having lived it through her daughter, why the victims are slow to speak. When she learns that Pascal Mitterrand lodged a complaint in 2008, she is upset. Then the investigation of Ebdo was published in 2018, so she decides to speak, but not alone.
Cecile had buried his memory but the revelations of Ebdo brought out his suffering, like post-traumatic stress disorder. “It was a story with a beloved man. I had made my way “, she said in Special Envoy. She was allegedly assaulted in 1998, when she was 23 years old and had a contract at the French Embassy in Moscow. She unblocks a complicated situation for the equipment of the team of Nicolas Hulot’s show, at customs and to thank her, she is invited to the hotel of the staff of‘Ushuaia. After a drink in a very chic club in the Russian capital, she wants to go home and he follows her: “In the car he becomes enterprising. If you want I can help you get a job at TF1. He puts his hand on his thigh and repeats his sentence. He insists. I pushed him away, I hit him in the face. I made it clear that I didn’t want to have sex“When asked why she didn’t file a complaint, she laughed nervously:”In Moscow, against a friend of President Chirac ? “
Even the president’s granddaughter who is Pascale mitterrand hesitated for ten years before filing a rape complaint in 2008. She did not want to be mentioned by name in the Ebdo to protect themselves from the media storm. Above all, she wanted the man to be confronted with his conscience because she accuses him of having sexually assaulted her in Corsica where she had gone as a trainee photographer at 19, she was 42. Nicolas Hulot a declared on the set of BFMTV where he anticipated the broadcast ofCorrespondent, that this relationship was agreed. She did not wish to testify in this program, always wishing to protect herself from the media whirlwind.
Claire Nouvian, environmental activist, does not claim to be sexually assaulted by Nicolas Hulot. However, she testifies because she was warned by the political entourage of the former minister never to be alone with him. Later, he will try to kiss her, when, according to her, there was no sign of a moment of seduction. She then wonders: “There is clearly a dysfunction in his relationship with women. Everyone is aware of this, due to the fact that there is a lot of consumption (…) a lot of young girls who go to the pan. As long as they are consenting adults, there is nothing to say about it (…) consenting adults, there is nothing to say, and if there were not more serious problems , we wouldn’t be here talking about it. “So this is the consent issue which seems to be at the heart of the Hulot affair.
It is difficult not to draw the parallel between the Hulot affair and that of PPDA. Both men are TV stars who seemed as popular as they were untouchable, a status that made it even harder for these women to speak out. the hashtag Metoo turned things upside down and the floor is freed, the host Maureen Dor who was also silent, spoke against Nicolas Hulot since the investigation ofCorrespondent this November 25. The facts being prescribed, Nicolas Hulot is presumed innocent of the facts with which he is accused. Contacted on November 9, 2021 by Elise Lucet and Virginie Vilar for Correspondent, he stated : “We are trapped anyway, whatever we say, the word is suspect. Whatever we say. Here is. We cannot defend ourselves. We cannot defend ourselves … Because in this legitimate, necessary fight of women, the voice of women is sacred.“