Sexual harassment: an open investigation against Pierre Ménès into his actions on Canal +

This follows the documentary “I am not a slut, I am a journalist”. The actions of Pierre Ménès on Canal +, denounced by journalist Marie Portolano in March 2021, are in the sights of justice. An investigation was opened on Tuesday, January 4, in Nanterre, against the former star columnist, said the Nanterre prosecutor’s office requested by AFP.

After an internal Canal + investigation during which, according to BFM TV, seven people denounced facts of “sexual harassment”. The Labor Inspectorate sent a report to the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office in December, which opened a preliminary investigation. The investigations are entrusted to the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against people (BRDP).

In the documentary “I am not a slut, I am a journalist”, dealing with sexism in the field of sports journalism, Pierre Ménès was notably accused of having lifted the skirt of his colleague Marie Portolano and of having touched her buttocks , off the air and in front of the audience of the “Canal Football Club” program, in 2016. The famous sports journalist claims not to remember it, due to serious health problems at the time. He is also accused of having forcibly kissed two columnists, Isabelle Moreau and Francesca Antoniotti, in other programs. He had left Canal + in the summer of 2021.

Contacted by LCI this Thursday, Pierre Ménès Arash Derambarsh’s lawyer was quick to react. “The Canal + group and my client Pierre Ménès signed a transactional memorandum of understanding (amicable agreement) to end their collaboration. If the Canal + group has signed an amicable agreement rather than a dismissal for misconduct serious, it is precisely because his employer had not noticed anything, even after studying this report. The study of this internal report points to anonymous testimonies, facts not corroborated and not proven or sometimes prescribed. My client strongly contests the facts for which he is accused and deplores this relentlessness provoked by media pressure “, he insists.

Pierre Ménès will also be tried in June 2022 in Paris, for a case of sexual assault. At the end of the PSG-Nantes match on November 20, 2021 at the Parc des Princes in Paris, a woman reported to the police facts of sexual assault for which the former columnist of the encrypted channel would be responsible, without filing a complaint. The Paris prosecutor’s office had opened an investigation. Pierre Ménès, who disputes the facts, had been issued a summons by judicial police officer (COPJ) to be tried on June 8.