Since January 7, 2021, Camille Kouchner's book has been on everyone's lips. After three decades, she broke the silence around a terrible family secret. Through the pages of La Familia Grande, the lawyer lifts the veil on the acts of her stepfather Olivier Duhamel. We thus learn that the famous political scientist, accustomed to television sets, would have raped (on several occasions "for two or three years ”) his teenage twin brother at the end of the 80s. These revelations had the effect of a real earthquake: Olivier Duhamel resigned from all his functions, just like some of his relatives, while justice opened an investigation for “rape and sexual assault by a person having authority over a 15-year-old minor”. But when was the respondent informed of the release of this work? In the newsstand magazine Thursday January 21, 2021, our colleagues from Paris Match have investigated.
How Olivier Duhamel tried to warn his relatives
On January 2, Olivier Duhamel returned from a stay in Dubai with his adopted daughter Aurore, and his two children. A return from vacation that will not be easy. “A new year begins, we must relaunch the forums, the writing projects, prepare the chronicles on Europe 1, LCI, take a look at his obligations as president of the National Foundation for Political Science, of the century”, indicates Paris Match. As he tries to fix a water leak, the constitutional law specialist "shortens phone calls covering him with wishes ”. It was the next day, Sunday January 3, that he received the phone call that would turn his life as a man of power upside down: a journalist from World informs him of the release of his daughter-in-law Camille Kouchner's book and asks for a reaction. Without a word, "Olivier Duhamel hangs up ”.
“He did not know the writing of this book, his publication by Le Seuil, the publisher where he has published so many books. No one told him, the outing was put together in the greatest secrecy with The Obs and The world, two newspapers edited by Louis Dreyfus, Camille Kouchner's companion. ” Puzzled by the news of his imminent fall, Olivier Duhamel takes the phone to warn "one by one his relatives” of the bomb about to explode. “Something's gonna come out in the press about me, I wanted you to know before”, he would have announced, with a voice "grave, lapidary ”. The next morning, Monday January 4, extracts from La Familia Grande are revealed in the columns of the two newspapers. Everything is over, Olivier Duhamel gives up his prestigious positions and takes refuge in his holiday home in Sanary-sur-Mer.
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