Pierre Ménès will be tried on Wednesday for sexual assault
The former star football columnist is summoned before the Paris Criminal Court for sexual violence which he denies.
Pierre Ménès, here in Paris in July 2021, filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation following an accusation of sexual assault he allegedly committed at the Parc des Princes last November.
AFP / BERTRAND GUAY
Pierre Ménès, who left Canal + after the broadcast in the spring of 2021 of a documentary on sexism in the newsrooms, will be tried on Wednesday in Paris for “sexual assault” which he vigorously contests.
After the PSG-Nantes match on November 20 in Paris, a Parc des Princes hostess reported to the police acts of sexual assault for which the former football star columnist was responsible, without filing a complaint. According to “Le Parisien”, he would have touched the chest of this woman. Placed in police custody on December 9 and released the same evening, he had denied these accusations.
According to the investigation site, this complaint had been dismissed on January 17, 2019 after a reminder of the law by the Paris prosecutor’s office, a criminal orientation which can be revised in the event of new facts.
“We will demonstrate the calumny which has damaged the honor and consideration of Mr. Menes.”
“My client is completely calm, concerning facts which are not at all characterized, and we will demonstrate the slander which has damaged the honor and consideration of Mr. Ménès”, declared to AFP his lawyer, Arash Derambarsh.
Pierre Ménès and Arash Derambarsh in Paris, July 8, 2021.
AFP / BERTRAND GUAY
Regarding the sexual assault of which he is accused at the Parc des Princes, the lawyer said in December that he had “six testimonies which clear Pierre Ménès”. There is in this file “neither complaint, nor evidence, nor victim, nor the beginning of the beginning of the slightest photo, video or testimony”, argues the council, speaking of “legal aberration”.
Pierre Ménès filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation and produced three witness statements “confirming unanimously that (he had) spent all of his time by their side as soon as he arrived for the cocktail in the box, during the match and the cocktail reception. post-match”, according to this complaint consulted by AFP.
Documentary on sexism
Sidelined at the end of March 2021 after accusations of sexual assault, the former star columnist of the “Canal Football Club” left the encrypted channel on July 1, ending almost twelve years of collaboration.
This departure had followed the broadcast on Canal + of a documentary on sexism in sports newsrooms and the revelation of incriminating sequences, cut during editing at the request of the channel, suspected of having protected him.
Pierre Ménès is notably accused of having lifted off the air in 2016 the skirt of Marie Portolano, co-director of the documentary. The journalist, who had not lodged a complaint at the material time, was heard last April by the police, as part of the investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Pierre Ménès assured not to remember the incident due to serious health problems at the time: non-alcoholic cirrhosis which kept him away from the sets for seven months and required a double liver transplant and a kidney.
‘Deep regret’
He is also criticized for forcibly kissing journalist Isabelle Moreau on television in 2011, as well as columnist Francesca Antoniotti in 2016 (see the tweet below).
These facts took place before the outbreak of the #MeToo wave. Since then, he had launched on Cyril Hanouna’s show on C8, “we can no longer say anything, we can no longer do anything”. Pierre Ménès had however expressed “deep regrets”.
In eleven years of collaboration with Canal +, he says he was summoned only once in 2018 to take it “easy” on his “reflections”, and to have received a warning last year for an interview given, without authorization, on Youtube.
In October, the columnist launched a digital platform dedicated to football with Reworld Media, the “Pierrot Football Club”.
Posted today at 12:23 p.m.
You found an error?Please let us know.