Already convicted in the past for acts of a sexual nature, the former Secretary of State Jean-Vincent Place has been indicted Tuesday, March 29, 2022 in Paris for “sexual assault“, a case triggered in November by the filing of a complaint by an ex-collaborator, reports the AFP. Asked on Tuesday evening, he did not answer, nor did his lawyer, Me Lisa Janaszewicz, who had indicated during the day to AFP that she had “no statement to make“. Me Tewfik Bouzenoune, Audrey’s lawyer, felt that this indictment meant the “merits of the complaint and of the approach [sa] client“. This last “remains determined to ensure that the truth comes out. It approaches this new phase with serenity and confidence in justice“, he added, pointing out that “the indictment will make it possible to deepen the investigations already carried out (…) in a fairly rapid time frame“.
AFP and Mediapart revealed that Audrey (first name has been changed), a former collaborator who had followed the Senate politician to the State Secretariat for Reform and Simplification, had filed a complaint against him, accusing the former 54-year-old elected environmentalist acts of sexual harassment between 2012 and 2016. Some of the facts she denounced were also akin to sexual assault: the collaborator accused him in particular of having “touched the buttocks“, in August 2015 in Lille, in a nightclub on the sidelines of the summer gathering of Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV). The second denounced attack allegedly occurred in mid-May 2016 in Seoul, during an official trip by Jean-Vincent Placed: in a car, François Hollande’s ex-secretary of state would have “deliberately touched the chest by Audrey“.
Following this complaint, the prosecutor’s office quickly opened a preliminary investigation. In recent months, the complainant, as well as former collaborators of elected environmentalists, had been heard by investigators, according to sources familiar with the matter. The former member of the government was taken into custody Monday morning at the Brigade repression of delinquency to persons (BRDP), and in particular confronted with the complainant, according to close sources. He was presented the next afternoon to an examining magistrate after the opening of a judicial investigation by the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The investigating magistrate indicted him, according to a judicial source, “counts of sexual assault by person abusing the authority conferred by his office, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by a person abusing the authority conferred by his office“. Jean-Vincent Placé was placed under judicial supervision, with a ban on contacting the complainants and a bond of 20,000 euros, according to a source familiar with the matter. The facts concerning a third plaintiff would be prescribedaccording to the same close source.
Other charges
In November, three other former collaborators of elected officials told AFP that they had also suffered inappropriate gestures of the former Secretary of State: the first “in the back of a taxi in 2011“; the second “in a restaurant in 2015” and at the State Secretariat a year later; the third in the same nightclub in Lille, in August 2015.
This indictment is not the first opportunity for the fallen ex-politician to face justice. In March 2021, Jean-Vincent Placé was sentenced to a fine for sexual harassment of a policeman in charge of his security. In September 2018, he was sentenced to three months in jail suspended and a fine of 1000 euros for violence and insults during an evening where he admitted having been “extremely insistent” and “moved” with a client. To AFP, in November, at least four women had attested to the “inappropriate behavior” or “climate of ambiguity“maintained at work by the ex-senator.
Jean-Vincent Placé remains presumed innocent of the charges against him until the final judgment of this case.