An investigation was opened Tuesday by the Nanterre prosecutor’s office against the former star columnist for facts denounced by journalist Marie Portolano in a documentary broadcast last March on Canal +.
Pierre Ménès’ behavior with certain Canal + journalists, highlighted by the documentary I’m not a bitch, I’m a journalist, now interests justice. The Nanterre public prosecutor’s office opened on Tuesday a preliminary investigation into the alleged actions of the journalist when he officiated on the encrypted channel, as revealed by BFMTV. The opening of this investigation follows a report from the Hauts-de-Seine Labor Inspectorate on December 17, made under article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Labor inspectors had taken note of an internal Canal + report, written a few months ago, after the broadcast of Marie Portolano’s documentary.
According to information from BFMTV, this report contains accusations of “sexual harassment” worn by seven former or current Canal + employees who have worked with Pierre Ménès Among these seven people are both men and women. It would notably contain the testimony of Isabelle Moreau, journalist who had been forcibly embraced on the set of the “Canal Football Club” in February 2011, as well as that of Marie Portolano, to whom Pierre Ménès lifted her skirt. ‘from a 2016 show.
Judged in June in another case
Sidelined at the end of March after accusations of sexual assault, the former star columnist of the Football Club Channel, 58, left the encrypted channel on July 1, ending nearly twelve years of collaboration. This departure was the consequence of the broadcast on March 21 on Canal + of I’m not a bitch, I’m a journalist a documentary on sexism in sports editors and the revelation of incriminating sequences, cut during the editing at the request of the channel, suspected of having protected him.
Pierre Ménès is facing justice in another case of sexual violence. At the end of the PSG-Nantes match on November 20, in Paris, a woman had reported to the police acts of sexual assault for which the journalist was responsible, without filing a complaint. The same day, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation. Pierre Ménès had been placed in police custody before being summoned to the criminal court to be tried. The trial will take place on June 8.