The PPDA case is back in the news with the broadcast of a special issue of “Complément d’Enquête” on April 28, on France 2. And the prosecution testimonies continue against the journalist, now 74 years old, who was for 30 years the star of the TF1 8 p.m. news.
“He took off his pants, and he raped me“
Last December already, a testimony had particularly shocked in the program “Seven to eight”. It was that of “Mathilda” (assumed name), who had told that in 1995, she was 24 years old, when she had dealt with Patrick Poivre d’Arvor. Since she told of the attempted assault of which she was the victim in the empty premises of TF1, one evening, “Mathilda” shored up this week.
She filed a complaint in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, for 4 hours, and she recounts the prescribed facts which are now under study before the Nanterre prosecutor’s office. “Mathilde” remembers being invited by PPDA to her office from their first editorial conference. She explains : “At the beginning, the conversation takes place completely normally, on my wishes at TF1, how I intend to evolve […]. And suddenly, like that, in a second, he asks me if I have a boyfriend, if I have a lover. I felt cold, I replied ‘no’. He gets up, he walks around his huge desk, he comes and sits down next to me, he puts his hands on my shoulders and he kisses me. He rocked me with his hands on the carpet“.
>> See also: PPDA case: what Claire Chazal thinks
And to add:My body was there but I was no longer there. He took off my pants, he took off his pants, and he raped me (…) I had no more reflexes (…) I looked at the ceiling. It lasted two minutes, no more than two minutes. He got dressed, I got dressed. He said ‘good evening, see you tomorrow’. I find it appalling”.
“It’s a shame that sticks for life”
A testimony that took more than 25 years to come out. And this, despite the second complaint filed by PPDA for slanderous testimony this week, against 16 women. Now decided to speak with the support of her fellow presumed victims, Mathilde nevertheless admits: “It was impossible to speak. It’s a lifelong shame. I don’t think I could ever get rid of it”.
FA