In the second preliminary investigation targeting the former TF1 presenter, 22 women testified. The facts denounced by three of them are not time-barred; 19 complaints and reports were closed without further action.
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A mixed decision for Patrick Poivre d’Arvor. After indictment for rape from the former presenter of the TF1 news, at the end of December, in the Florence Porcel affair, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office asked the investigating judges to investigate two rapes and a sexual assault committed between 2007 and 2018, franceinfo learned Wednesday February 28.
This request comes at the end of the second preliminary investigation opened at the end of 2021. The prosecution closed 19 other reports without further action. PPDA will therefore be heard again on these facts by the two judges responsible for the investigation in the Porcel case, who will decide whether or not to re-indict him. Asked by franceinfo, his lawyer Jacqueline Laffont had not yet reacted early Tuesday afternoon.
In this second part of the “PPDA affair”, 22 women accuse former PAF star of rape and sexual assault. Only ten filed a complaint. One of them was confronted by the 75-year-old ex-journalist in the premises of the Brigade for the Repression of Personal Delinquency (BRDP) last July. This complainant is one of three accusers for whom the facts denounced are not prescribed. She claims he forcibly kissed her during a party in April 2018.
45 women came forward to the courts
The rest of the complaints and reports were closed without further action, due to the statute of limitations, or dismissed, the facts not being “susceptible to criminal classification”, according to the prosecution. Other facts could also have been qualified as sexual harassment, but this offense, created in 2012, did not yet exist at the time when they were committed. The Nanterre public prosecutor’s office specifies that all reports made to the justice system will be included in the investigation file, even when they are time-barred or not criminally admissible.
This decision is considered disappointing by the writer Bénédicte Martin, who had filed a complaint for a sexual assault in the former star’s office in 2003. “It’s a big disappointment, we saw positive signs in the way our cases were handled, the police had put in the resources, the decision had been delayed”observes the one who had testified openly in Release. “This reflects the current climate where we are witnessing backlash [retour de bâton] in the #MeToo movement”she adds.
Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was also placed under the status of assisted witness for another act of rape of which Florence Porcel accuses him, which occurred in 2004. A first complaint from the journalist and author had been dismissed in June 2021the magistrates pointing out a “insufficient evidence”. At the same time, she filed a new complaint with civil party constitution, to obtain the opening of a new investigation entrusted to investigating judges. In total, 45 women have come forward to the courts since the initial complaint Florence Porcel. The majority of them say they were attacked or raped in one and the same place: the presenter’s office, in the TF1 tower, after the 8 p.m. news.