The sexual assault investigation targeting Jean-Jacques Bourdin has been dismissed, the journalist announced on Friday in a press release sent by his lawyer, Me Christian Saint-Palais. This investigation was dismissed on April 7 for prescription of public action, confirmed the Paris prosecutor’s office, requested by AFP.
A preliminary investigation had been opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office
On January 19, a few days after the revelation of a complaint against Jean-Jacques Bourdin by a former BFMTV / RMC journalist for facts dating back to 2013, the Paris prosecutor’s office indicated that it had opened a preliminary investigation for sexual assault, entrusted at the 16th arrondissement police station.
In mid-February, journalist Fanny Agostini, former weather presenter for RMC-BFMTV, then passed through Thalassa, revealed in Mediapart to be the source of this complaint. According to her, the facts would have occurred in 2013 in Corsica, in Calvi. A few days later, a second woman also filed a complaint for sexual assault, harassment and sexual exhibition, accusing Mr. Bourdin of events that occurred in the late 1980s.
“I denounce the instrumentalization of this procedure”, says Bourdin
“I have always firmly contested the facts with which I have been accused”, recalls in his press release the journalist who had been dismissed from the antennas of BFMTV and RMC on January 23, a few days after the opening of the investigation. “I denounce the public instrumentalization of this procedure and deplore the serious attacks that have been made on my personal life and my professional life”, he adds.
This “classification is not a surprise since the complaint was effectively time-barred”, reacted to AFP Me Laure Heinich, lawyer for Fanny Agostini, regretting however not to have been notified “of any act of investigation, nor by the police or by the prosecutor’s office”.