PPDA case: reports of sexual violence accumulate, but impunity persists

It was for the first time in a novel that speech began to emerge. When he publishes Florence Porcel Pandorini in 2021, some people recognize Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and his alleged modus operandi. The novelist immediately filed the first rape complaint against the former TF1 star at 8:00 pm, in February 2021. In November of the same year, in Publicationeight other women testify, including seven with bare faces, of rape, sexual assault and harassment. At the time, 23 of them had spoken to the police against the PPDA, without necessarily leaking the news to the media.. Mediapart even brings together 20 alleged victims to explain their version of events, the systemic nature of which is chilling.

On September 19, 2022, Publication publishes three new testimonials. If the background was rather of people from journalism, it’s the turn of the publishing community, where PPDA still exerts tremendous influence.

3 new alleged victims of the PPDA accuse him in the media

This is Bénédicte Martinwhich tells of a sexual assault that took place in 2003. He would immediately talk about it with the person who had treated him at the time, Fréderic Beigbeder, who would have played down the facts before Michel Houellebecq entered the office:

“What’s going on ?” “It happens that PPDA tried to skip Bénédicte.” Houellebecq would have concluded: “Then nothing changes”.

It also concerns the writer Margot Cauquil-Gleizes which traces her testimony (first broadcast under the pseudonym of Anne in November 2021). She filed a complaint on 9 September 2022 for a rape allegedly committed in May 1985 and a sexual assault in 1991 or 1992. In The women in my lifepublished in 1988 by Grasset, PPDA would even evoke the alleged rape of the author, he reports Publication :

Anne is compared to a “lobster” that must be taken “thumb and forefinger behind the claws. Only then did she stop wiggling her long legs and started purring.”

The third new story, published by Publicationretraces Juliette’s storyfalse name – prefers to remain anonymous so as not to disturb the imminent publication of a novel: on 12 September 2022 she writes to the public prosecutor to add to her testimony a rape presumably occurred in 1998 or 1999 in the context of the investigation opened on PPDA.

Will Patrick Poivre d’Arvor’s impunity continue for long?

In the wake of these new testimonies, Hélène Devynck, one of the plaintiffs best known to the general public, publishes an essay, Impunity (published in Le Seuil on 23 September 2022) to decipher the ” machinery by Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and tries to understand what allows him the impunity he still enjoys:

“To build this criminal system and make it run smoothly for thirty years, it is not enough for a man, for court phenomena, for the cowardice of a social group and for this profoundly human tendency to confuse authority with truth. It also takes an enormous scaffolding, overlapping legends about power, about sexuality, seduction, men and women. “

In this period, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor filed a complaint for ” slanderous complaint against 16 applicants who accuse him of harassment, sexual assault or rape. After a first complaint filed without action in February 2022, he again filed a complaint for the same reason in April, he reports Info France.

Nearly 90 women are said to be victims of PPDA, including around 20 complainants

His career so little tainted by these accusations, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was also to sit on the jury of the French Radiation Grand Prix. This ceremony, which rewards those who make the country shine abroad, will be held on 4 October 2022 in the salons of the Quai d’Orsay.

Reported in this regard by many feminists, the organizer of this prestigious award, Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam (senator for French citizens residing abroad, vice-president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and president of the Association du Rayonnement) comes to announce on Twitter the exclusion of the former protagonist of TF1.

Now collectively, the alleged victims of the PPDA estimate to be at least 90, according to the testimonies received from the first complainants. For two of them the alleged facts would not be prescribed, but they do not dare to file a complaint.

All the persons named are, at present, presumed innocent.

Front page photo credit: JC Lattès Editions, La Grenade / Patrick Poivre d’Arvor collection in the park of the Noailles Media Library in Cannes, 2012. Frantogian Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported / Seuil editions.