Following a complaint filed against him for attempted sexual assault, the political journalist was suspended by RMC and BFMTV. Games of seduction and ambiguous behavior: new revelations have emerged via testimonies.
Accused of attempted sexual assault by a former BFMTV journalist, Jean-Jacques Bourdin finds himself at the heart of a case which gradually reveals its share of surprises. On January 11, 2022, the complainant assured our colleagues of the Parisian than the famous political journalist would have tried to kiss him by force in a swimming pool in a hotel in Calvi (Haute-Corse) during a business trip in 2013. A week after the complaint was filed, Jean-Jacques Bourdin was laid off by RMC and BFMTV. A decision that the journalist found difficult to accept, lamenting that the “that the principle of the presumption of innocence be ignored”.
If Jean-Jacques Bourdin has always pleaded his innocence, many people talk about his personality in the media. In the columns of Parisian, on January 29, 2022, journalist Dominique Grimaud recalled a “game” in which Jean-Jacques Bourdin liked to indulge in the late 1970s with colleagues: “Le Slip jaune”, a seduction contest on the roads of France, in reference to the yellow jersey of the Tour de France. “It was up to whoever nabbed as many chicks as possible on the tour. There was also a green slip for the fastest. We were long before #MeToo. It was more laid back. And above all, the girls were consenting. No one has been raped, ever”, assured Dominique Grimaud.
He would have “heated” female journalism students
The testimonies concerning Jean-Jacques Bourdin break in the chain. In the late 1980s, whenhe taught radio at the Practical Institute of Journalism (IPJ), the man would have behaved inappropriately with certain students. According to The Parisian, a journalist he trained claims to have been “downright heated” by presenter : “He did it very well. For him, it was so much the better if it bites. Otherwise, he moved on to another. But we were twenty years apart anyway! Another of his former students assures us that “He played it playboy, the open shirt with the hair sticking out, the gold chain and the cowboy boots”.
On January 18, on the set of Do not touch My TV, Gilles Verdez, one of the columnists of Cyril Hanouna, had also testified to confidences made by two young former trainees who worked alongside Jean-Jacques Bourdin in the 1990s.We are not at all in a case of sexual assault, but they told me about a very heavy context. A very complicated context, a context of pressure”, assured Gilles Verdez. Before adding: “They told me that it was better to always be both in the editorial staff”. Case to follow.