Jean-Michel Baylet in September 2020. -
Alain Robert - Sipa
The Paris prosecutor's office has opened an investigation for "rape and sexual assault" on a minor targeting the former minister Jean-Michel Baylet.
The press boss, heard recently in open hearing, categorically denies the facts which go back more than forty years.
Her accuser, Nathalie Collin, now in her fifties, delivers her story and explains why she is now coming out of her silence.
She calls "JMB" the one she accuses of rape and wants "shame to change sides".
In an interview with AFP, Nathalie Collin, 52, reveals her identity and why she joined the #MeeToo wave more than forty years after the sexual violence of which she says she was a victim at the hands of Jean-Michel Baylet, ex -minister of François Hollande and boss of the press group
La Dépêche du Midi
.
These revelations come a week after the lawyer for the person concerned confirmed that the former president of the Left Radical Party (PRG) and current mayor of Valence-d'Agen (Tarn-et-Garonne) was heard at the end of February, in Paris and in open hearing, by investigators from the brigade for the protection of minors.
This summons followed the opening on June 9 by the prosecution, on denunciation of Nathalie Collin, of an investigation for "rape and sexual assault on minors under 15 years".
Jean-Yves Dupeux, lawyer for Jean-Michel Baylet, had indicated on March 1 that before the police his client had "formally contested these false allegations and provided all the necessary details".
"Lacking" memories but "places and smells"
Nathalie Collin was heard on August 12.
The daughter of former senator PRG Yvon Collin, today quarreled with the boss of
La Dépêche du Midi
, situates the facts between her 12 years and 14 years.
According to her, it all started in Greece in Jean-Michel Baylet's villa where she was on vacation with her parents.
Her memories are, she readily says, “incomplete” but also made up of precise images “of places (Paris, Font-Romeu, Toulouse), acts and smells”.
Ten years ago, these facts had already been reported to the Montauban prosecutor's office.
Heard at the time, Nathalie Collin had indicated that nothing had happened.
"But it was wrong, I was just not ready," she told AFP today.
Because we are steeped in guilt, shame and that revelation is a threat to the balance of the family ”.
"It takes a long time to be reconciled with the little girl that we were and to grant her this status of victim," she adds.
Nathalie Collin is aware that the now exacerbated quarrel between her father and Jean-Michel Baylet exposes her to suspicion, but she assures that she does not want "to be dispossessed of [her] story".
She also knows that the alleged facts concerning her are time-barred but hopes that "JMB will finally be seen as who he really is."
Politics
Former minister Jean-Michel Baylet heard on charges of rape of minors that he disputes
Media
The letter of a rapist in the front page of "Liberation" arouses the indignation of feminists
Pedocriminality
Sexual violence
Rape
Toulouse
Society