Paris (AFP)

The Paris Prosecutor's Office has requested a trial for "corruption of a minor" of the television and radio host Jean-Marc Morandini, targeted by charges he disputes, we learned on Sunday from a judicial source, confirming information from the newspaper Le Parisien.

Nearly four years after the opening of an investigation, the public prosecutor requested on April 3 that the host of CNews and NRJ12 be tried before the criminal court for "corruption of a minor" and "corruption of a minor per person contact with the victim via an electronic communications network ".

He also requested that Mr. Morandini be kept under judicial supervision.

It is now up to the investigating judge to decide whether to hold a trial.

Jean-Marc Morandini, now 54 years old, was indicted in 2016 after two young men, minors at the time of the events they denounce, had brought justice.

One of these young men has since withdrawn his complaint.

In the first complaint, a young man claimed that Mr. Morandini had made sexual offers to him in SMS exchanges, between February and March 2013.

The second complainant, who has since withdrawn, said that he was contacted in July 2009 by Mr. Morandini's production company via a casting site for a remake of the film "Ken Park" by the American director Larry Clark, who told the life of teenagers in the United States between boredom, sex and violence.

He explained that he had been invited, alone, to the host's home where the latter would have invited him to undress and reproduce a masturbation scene, according to the Parisian.

In another case, Morandini was accused of "sexual harassment" and "hidden work" by several actors in 2016, as part of an article in the cultural magazine Les Inrocks on naked castings organized by the TV host.

These actors, who have since filed a complaint, had accused Mr. Morandini and his company "Ne Zappez pas Production" of having benefited from the castings of an erotic web-series, "les Faucons", to push them to show off naked while being filmed or while filming themselves.

Seized of this complaint, the Paris prosecutor's office had closed its investigation without follow-up in January 2017. But the plaintiffs obtained in 2018 the resumption of the investigations, now in the hands of a Paris investigating judge.

© 2020 AFP