After the revelations by “Liberation” of twenty testimonies reporting numerous cases of sexual or moral harassment in at least six museums, the mayor of Paris seized the General Inspectorate of the city.
The Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo seized the General Inspectorate of the City of Paris “following the publication of press articles highlighting acts of harassment and racism within several museums of the public establishment Paris-Musées”, which manages the fourteen municipal museums, announces the latter in a press release. The former PS presidential candidate asks his inspectors to check “that all alerts have been taken into account and that responses have been provided”.
In a survey published on April 9, Release collected around twenty testimonies reporting numerous cases of sexual or moral harassment, homophobic, racist and misogynistic comments, and even attacks in at least six of the fourteen museums. According to the stories, these behaviors are the work of agents with the status of civil servants and their victims are for the most part contractors with precarious status, with younger and female profiles.
The management of Paris-Musées ensures that “any report of harassment or discrimination has given rise to the opening of a procedure”, has “Is the subject of treatment and follow-up, and is accompanied by sanctions when the facts are proven”. At the end of the procedure, which provides “the immediate protection of the victim (limitation of contacts, temporary suspension, removal of the agent in question…)” and an internal investigation, “several types of sanctions can then be pronounced, ranging from warning to dismissal”, Management says again.
“All the situations mentioned by the newspaper Release are processed in accordance with this procedure, says Paris-Musées again, which says it cannot give details of the cases or the sanctions for reasons of confidentiality. “For some, the steps have already been completed”, such as the Palais Galliera, the Petit Palais, the archaeological crypt on the Ile de la Cité and the Catacombs, “for others, they are in progress”, as in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris or the Carnavalet Museum.
Paris-Musées also indicates that it has prepared “an action plan to strengthen the protection of victims and the processing of reports, which will be presented in the coming days to the trade unions”.