It’s a belated but essential admission: the management of TF1 must have “missed something” about its former star presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, indicted for rapel, admitted on Thursday, November 7, 2024 Robert Namiasthe channel’s news director between 1996 and 2008.
“The context wasn’t the same” but “despite everything, we missed something”, the former director told the commission of inquiryon the sexual violence in the cinema and theaudiovisual. “We never imagined for a moment that there could be such crimes committed at TF1,” he elaborated under oath.
A protected serial rapist?
“It’s a huge wound that opened up in November 2021” when the revelations about this case came to light, he stressed, while some victims believe that TF1 management “protected” its former star presenter.
A former journalist herself at LCIchannel of the same group, the MP Estelle Youssouffa (Liot group) stated that “the harassment (of PPDA) was well known”.
In all, more than 40 women have testified in court against the 77-year-old former Antenne 2 and TF1 news anchor, who is contesting the accusations of rape andsexual assaults.
70 to 80 women accuse the journalist
A first judicial information had been opened in 2021 Nanterrefollowing a civil action brought by author Florence Porcel, who accused PPDA of raping her twices. He was indicted in December 2023 for one of these rapes.
“Poivre presented the newspaper for twenty years” and “we’re talking about 70 to 80” women publicly accusing him, few of them channel staff – and not always for assaults in his office but outside the office,” noted Mr. Namias.
“I was never informed of anything,” insisted the former manager, “and if we had had the slightest conviction, he should have left the company immediately.”
Mysterious “search” of PPDA’s office
When asked about a visit by policeof the presenter’s office in the TF1 tower following a rape complaint lodged in June 2005 (and dismissed shortly afterwards), Mr. Namias denied any knowledge of it: “there is no trace of this visit”.
Revealed in October by Le Mondethis complaint after having been filed by Caroline Merlet29 at the time, who had attended the television news. The host was then interviewed by the police judiciaire des Hauts-de-Seine.
Mr. Namias also assured us that he had “no recollection” of any reports of harassment by “Poivre”. He did acknowledge, however, that “back in the 1980s-1990s, or even 2000s, we didn’t have the same approach to these issues of harassment. sexual harassment “.