Former columnist Pierre Ménès tried on Wednesday for sexual assault

Europe 1 with AFP 11:01 a.m., June 06, 2022

Former football star columnist Pierre Ménès will be tried on Wednesday in Paris for "sexual assault" which he vigorously contests.

The journalist had left Canal + after the broadcast in the spring of 2021 of a documentary on sexism in the newsrooms.

At the end of the PSG-Nantes match on November 20 in Paris, a hostess of the Parc des Princes had reported to the police acts of sexual assault for which Pierre Ménès, 58, would be responsible, without filing a complaint.

According to Le Parisien, he would have touched the chest of this woman.

Placed in police custody on December 9 and released the same evening, he had denied these accusations.

He is summoned Wednesday before the Paris Criminal Court to answer it, as well as the so-called "Nike" case.

In an article published in March 2021, Mediapart indicated that Pierre Ménès had been the subject of a complaint for "sexual assault" filed in October 2018 by an employee of a Parisian store of the sports equipment manufacturer.

According to the investigation site, this complaint had been dismissed on January 17, 2019 after a reminder of the law by the Paris prosecutor's office, a criminal orientation which can be revised in the event of new facts.

"My client is completely calm, concerning facts that are not at all characterized, and we will demonstrate the slander that has damaged the honor and consideration of Mr. Menes," said his lawyer, Arash Derambarsh .

Regarding the sexual assault of which he is accused at the Parc des Princes, the lawyer said in December that he had "six testimonies which clear Pierre Ménès".

There is in this file "neither complaint, nor evidence, nor victim, nor the beginning of the beginning of the slightest photo, video or testimony", argues the council, speaking of "legal aberration".

Pierre Ménès filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation and produced three witness statements "confirming unanimously that (he had) spent all of his time by their side as soon as he arrived for the cocktail reception, during the match and the cocktail reception. post-match", according to this complaint consulted by AFP.

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 An investigation opened against Pierre Ménès on his actions at Canal +

"Irreproachable behavior"

Sidelined at the end of March 2021 after accusations of sexual assault, the former star columnist of the "Canal Football Club" left the encrypted channel on July 1, ending almost twelve years of collaboration.

This departure had followed the broadcast on Canal + of a documentary on sexism in sports newsrooms and the revelation of incriminating sequences, cut during editing at the request of the channel, suspected of having protected him.

Pierre Ménès is notably accused of having lifted the skirt of journalist Marie Portolano, co-director of the documentary, off the air in 2016.

Marie Portolano, who had not filed a complaint at the material time, was heard last April by the police, as part of the investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor's office.

Pierre Ménès assured not to remember the incident due to serious health problems at the time: non-alcoholic cirrhosis which kept him away from the sets for seven months and required a double liver transplant and a kidney.

He is also criticized for forcibly kissing journalist Isabelle Moreau on television in 2011, as well as columnist Francesca Antoniotti in 2016.

These facts took place before the outbreak of the #MeToo wave.

Since then, he had launched on Cyril Hanouna's show on C8, "we can no longer say anything, we can no longer do anything".

Mr. Ménès had however expressed "deep regrets".

In eleven years of collaboration with Canal +, he says he was summoned only once in 2018 to take it "easy" on his "reflections", and to have received a warning last year for an interview given, without authorization, on Youtube.

In October, the columnist launched a digital platform dedicated to football with Reworld Media, the "Pierrot Football Club".