The investigation opened by the Paris public prosecutor’s office into the accusations of rape targeting the former PRG minister and boss of “la Dépêche du Midi” was dismissed due to the prescription of the facts.
He had been heard a year ago as part of this investigation, it is closed. The Paris prosecutor’s office has decided to close for prescription the investigation opened in 2020 after accusations of rape and sexual assault on a minor targeting Jean-Michel-Baylet. The former minister and current boss of the press group the Midi Dispatch has always “Formally contested these false allegations” on these facts “which would have taken place forty-one years ago”, explained his lawyer, Me Jean-Yves Dupeux, during his hearing last March.
The former president of the Radical Left Party (PRG), now mayor of Valence-d’Agen, in Tarn-et-Garonne, is accused by Nathalie Collin, daughter of former PRG senator Yvon Collin, of rape and sexual assault when she was between 12 and 14 years old in the early 1980s.
“What is important is that the prosecution does not say that it has classified because the facts are insufficiently characterized”, believes Me Zoé Royaux, lawyer for Ms. Collin. Asked, Mr. Baylet’s lawyer did not respond immediately.
The facts denounced by Ms. Collin would have started during a vacation in Greece with her parents in the villa of Jean-Michel Baylet, then would have continued. His memories are sometimes “lacunary”, she readily admitted, but they are also made “precise images of places (Paris, Font-Romeu, Toulouse), actions and smells”.
Systematic surveys
On his denunciation, the Paris prosecutor’s office had opened an investigation on June 9, 2020, for heads of “rapes” and “sexual assault on a minor under the age of 15 year”. This prosecutor’s office has become accustomed to systematically opening investigations into accusations of sexual violence against minors, even if the facts are apparently time-barred, in order to verify the facts and look for possible other non-time-barred assaults.
A practice that the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, has asked prosecutors in France to generalize, while testimonies and accusations of sexual violence against minors have multiplied in recent months.
About ten years ago, a former relation of the Baylet family had denounced acts of rape targeting Nathalie Collin in a report to the Montauban prosecutor. Understood, she had denied. “But it was wrong, I just wasn’t ready,” she admitted. She is silent “because we are steeped in guilt, shame and the revelation is a threat to the balance of the family”. From now on, “shame has changed sides”, estimated this Friday Me Zoé Royal.
Jean-Michel Baylet chaired the PRG for twenty years, from 1996 to 2016. He was also a senator and participated four times in left-wing governments, under the presidency of François Mitterrand and then François Hollande. Secretary of State then Minister between 1984 and 1993, he became Minister again in February 2016, this time for Regional Planning, Rural Affairs and Local Authorities.