April 28, 2022, Cécile Delarue, journalist and author, learns in the press that she is one of the 16 complainants against whom Patrick Poivre d’Arvor has just filed a complaint for “slanderous denunciation”. The previous complaint for the same reason from the former star presenter of TF1 had been dismissed.
>> PPDA case: the investigations extended to the a priori prescribed facts denounced by Florence Porcel
Today, at least 27 women have spoken out in court or in the press against him. The facts they denounce range from rape to sexual harassment.
“We don’t lie, what we say, we maintain it”had reacted flabbergasted Cécile Delarue, journalist and author, in charge of the communication of the collective “#MeTooMedias”, on franceinfo.
The investigation into PPDA by the Nanterre prosecutor’s office started in February 2021 when Florence Porcel had filed a complaint for rape had been closed four months later. The majority of facts are prescribed. But a rare fact, the Versailles Court of Appeal decided last week to extend the proceedings to the facts, soon prescribed, denounced by the writer.
The 16 women targeted by Patrick Poivre d’Arvor’s complaint may have to face a trial. Cécile Delarue – who knows 14 of the 16 women named in the complaint – is preparing for it, which will give them “the opportunity to have the trial that many of them are waiting for. Not necessarily a confrontation, not necessarily the idea of being able to fight, but rather being able to make our word heard in justice. And then also to see him confront justice.”
Twenty women agreed to speak together and testify before the editorial staff of Médiapart on May 9, including 18 with their faces uncovered. A turning point in this case, according to Cécile Delarue.“We had a huge outpouring of support which is obviously good, because suddenly we are heard, we are believed, above all what is very important.she explains to franceinfo. At the beginning, we said: ‘Florence Porcel is a liar’, then ‘they are all liars’. The question we all have now is ‘OK, we were believed’. We feel that even we touched people who didn’t even know the person who assaulted us, in the younger generation, but now it’s ‘what’s going to happen?'”
“Are we going to have justice one day? And above all, will things change politically? Will society change? It’s not enough just to tell our little miseries.”
Cécile Delarue, journalist and authorat franceinfo
“When we hear a President of the Republic who tells us a lot that he had helped to free speech, he also said words which, this year, for once, extremely shocked us.continues Cécile Delarue. And he talked about the tribunal of the Inquisition. We wrote to him, it took a lot of energy from us too. We wrote him an open letter which was published in Le Monde. We still haven’t had an answer.”
With the “#MetooMedias” collective that they founded in the wake of this affair, they are fighting to change things in society and to evolve mentalities. “Our fight afterwards is to know what to do now so that it does not happen again.explains the journalist. All the issues that are raised by our story, which are those of prescription, but also how do we manage serial sexual predators. How do we deal with people who have inappropriate sexual behavior at work? I don’t feel like it’s taken into account at all and that there’s a reflection on what we’re doing now.”
For a media environment free of sexist or sexual violence, our association is mobilizing. Join us ! #MeToo #MeTooMedias #media #hurry #VSS https://t.co/kCMtSdHnRu pic.twitter.com/acOvXa0hcT
— #MeTooMedias (@metoomedias) July 6, 2022
With each wave of media coverage, the association receives many testimonies, which concern people other than PPDA, but there are also women who bring new elements concerning him, “new testimonies, rape and harassment testimonies, sexual assault, with a list that only gets worse” according to Cécile Delarue. But for the most part it’s “complicated to file a complaint” because of the prescription of the facts which gives them the feeling that it will not help and also because many are afraid that “their intimacy (is) tossed about” and meet “in an extraordinary fight. And I think we’re all here to say that obviously we will support them. But that’s not enough, it’s very difficult.”
Cécile Delarue, herself has “a lot of hesitation” before expressing himself in the media but refuses to wonder about regrets, “I don’t want to tell myself that I’m sorry”. Today, if you type her name in Google, it is not her work as a journalist and author that you come across first, but the PPDA affair, “it becomes part of my CV”she breathes.
“It’s not something that I wanted. It’s more something that I suffer and at the same time, it’s something that I assume because I want, as a citizen and as a journalist, that things change.”
Cécile Delarue, journalist and authorat franceinfo
The #MetooMedias collective is still waiting for TF1 to launch an internal investigation into this file. Patrick Poivre d’Arvor benefits from the presumption of innocence. He strongly denies all the charges against him.