The management of TF1 has “obviously something was missed” On the subject of its former star presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, accused of rape, admitted, on Thursday, November 7, Robert Namias, former director of information between 1996 and 2008.
“The context was not the same,” but “Despite everything, something was missing”stated the former director before the commission of inquiry into sexual violence in cinema and audiovisuals. “We did not imagine for a moment that crimes of this type could be committed on TF1”developed under oath. “It is a huge wound that opened in November 2021” During the revelations about this file, he stressed, while some victims believe that the management of TF1 protected their former star.
Deputy Estelle Youssouffa (Liot group), former journalist for LCI, a channel of the same group, thus stated that “harassment [de PPDA] It was perfectly known.”. In total, more than 40 women testified in court against the former Antenne 2 and then TF1 news presenter, now 77, who rejects accusations of rape and sexual assault.
“They never informed me of anything”
A first judicial investigation was opened in 2021 in Nanterre after a complaint with the creation of a civil party by the author Florence Porcel, who accuses the PPDA of having raped her twice. He was accused in December 2023 of one of these violations.
“Poivre presented the newspaper for twenty years” AND “we are talking about 70 to 80” Women publicly accuse him, including some collaborators of the channel, and not always for attacks in his office but outside of it, said Robert Namias. “They never informed me of anything” AND “If we had the slightest conviction, I should have left the company immediately”the former manager insisted.
Asked about a visit by police officers to the presenter’s office in the TF1 tower following a rape complaint filed in June 2005 and filed shortly afterwards, Robert Namias denied knowledge of it. “There is no trace left of this visit”. Revealed in October by the world, This complaint was later filed by Caroline Merlet, then 29 years old, who had attended the television news. The presenter was then questioned by the Hauts-de-Seine judicial police.
Namias also assured that no ” memory “ of complaints of harassment by ” Pepper “. However, he acknowledged that “In the 80s and 90s or even in the 2000s, we did not have the same approach to these issues of sexual harassment”.
