Former Ecologist Secretary of State Jean-Vincent Placé was indicted on Tuesday evening for “sexual assault” and “sexual harassment” after 24 hours in police custody, a source told AFP. judicial.
According to this judicial source, “Jean-Vincent Placé was indicted on counts of sexual assault by a person abusing the authority conferred by his function, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by a person abusing the authority conferred by his function”, and placed under judicial supervision. A source close to the case indicated that this indictment concerned facts denounced by two complainants.
From the same source, his judicial control prohibits him from contacting the complainants and imposes a bond on him. A source familiar with the matter indicated that this indictment concerned facts denounced by two complainants, including Audrey *, whose complaint AFP had revealed with Mediapart in November. The facts concerning a third complainant would be prescribed, according to the same close source.
The complainant heard by the investigators
The former elected official was placed in police custody on Monday at the premises of the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP), as part of an investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office after Audrey’s complaint. , who had followed him from the Senate to the Secretary of State for Reform and Simplification.
During his police custody, he was confronted with this ex-collaborator, sources familiar with the matter told AFP. The prosecution opened a judicial investigation on Tuesday. Audrey* had filed a complaint in November 2021, accusing Jean-Vincent Placé, 54, of acts of sexual harassment between 2012 and 2016.
Several charges for similar facts
Some of the facts she denounced were also akin to sexual assault: the collaborator accused her in particular of having “touched her buttocks”, in August 2015 in Lille, on the sidelines of the summer gathering of Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV ).
In November, three other former collaborators of elected officials told AFP that they had also suffered inappropriate gestures from the former secretary of state: the first, Julie *, “in the back of a taxi in 2011 “; the second, Margaux *, “in a restaurant in 2015” and at the State Secretariat a year later; the third, Eléonore*, in the same nightclub in Lille in August 2015.
His lawyer, Me Lisa Janaszewicz, told AFP Tuesday noon that she had “no statement to make”, and had not reacted Tuesday evening to the announcement of the indictment.