By deciding to speak openly on the cover of Release in November 2021, Hélène Devynck allowed, with other courageous women, to take another look at the PPDA affair. The former TF1 JT star was openly denounced as a terrible sexual predator by several people from different backgrounds, relaying the word of the writer Florence Porcel who was the first to file a complaint against him. But in choosing to speak out, they have also received a flood of attacks. Hélène Devynck, former journalist, has signed a book-investigation Impunity of which she speaks in the columns of Parisian. A book she wrote after receiving a flood of attacks.
The Parisian met this woman who dared to take it out, along with other “sisters of misery“, to the most influential man of the PAF. Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was, only a few months ago, a French icon, whom everyone watched daily in his living room for years. So when she explained to do part, like Florence Porcel, of the victims of this influential journalist and presenter, she will be accused of being “semi-consenting“. The qualifiers she receives say a lot about the difficulty of changing the look: “not a white goose“, “star-fuckeuse” Where “brainless“…Being feminine was enough to discredit her word.
Hélène Devynck’s book reveals a system where “misogynistic violence was served by an organization based on abuse of power and intimidationn”. Patrick Poivre d’Arvor could have put in place his strategy of regular aggression with a professional entourage who sees nothing, or wants to see nothing, as the author Bénédicte Martin has also been able to tell.
Faced with these walls that the accusers face, there remains the force and the shock of the words. In his book, the grim and sordid descriptions haunt and mark. The author describes avery narrow penis“, recounts his own rape and quotes the “a few round tripsof the rapist in action. The Parisian summarized thus:It’s dirty, like this man without a word, without a regret, without embarrassment.“The downfall of the cathodic legend is underway, but it comes at a price with these women who must come clean and put themselves in such a fragile position to be believed.
A case that upsets an entire system
“The classification without follow-up demonstrated the banality of impunity“, estimated Hélène Devynck with AFP. “We had the impression that we were being thrown away, as if we hadn’t spoken, as if we had done nothing. I wanted to tell this story“, she explains. In her eyes, the PPDA affair cannot be reduced to “a man“: the author questions the responsibility of TF1, and a “criminal system” maintained by a culture of silence, tinged with complacency or indifference.
The 74-year-old man and father of 7 children filed a complaint in return for slanderous denunciation. Last July, the investigation targeting the former star host of TF1 changed approach, the judges now analyzing the rape charges against him as a whole to determine their possible serial nature, which would make it possible to circumvent their prescription. The PPDA case is therefore far from over.
Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is presumed innocent of the charges against him until the case is finally closed.
Impunityby Hélène Devynck, Editions du Seuil.