In a 62-minute report, the France 2 program gives a voice to these women, two of whom, Sylvia and Cécile, speak with their faces uncovered.

The third, anonymous, said to be a former collaborator.

The televised investigation also includes the testimony of the environmental activist Claire Nouvian and returns to the complaint for rape filed in 2008 by Pascale Mitterrand, granddaughter of the former president, dismissed because the facts were prescribed.

The day before, Nicolas Hulot had formally denied these accusations of sexual assault and announced to leave public life "definitively", to protect his relatives and his Foundation from the fallout of a "lynching".

On the set of the show "C à vous" of France 5, two hours before the broadcast of the report on France 2, the host of Special Envoy, Elise Lucet, explained the genesis of this televised investigation.

"After the Weinstein affair (...) we heard about a story of a woman who claimed to be harassed, assaulted by Nicolas Hulot, long before the first testimonies concerning him," she explained.

The report is "the result of four years of work".

Sylvia says she was sexually assaulted in 1989 at the age of 16 by Nicolas Hulot.

She says she was invited to attend a show he hosted in Paris.

He then allegedly offered to drive her back to a metro station but eventually drove her to an open-air parking lot.

"And there he takes out his penis (...), he took my hand, he asked me if I had already done it with boys", she says.

"He forces me to give him a blowjob that I don't really do because I think I'm paralyzed."

She adds that she did not mention it until much later to her mother and a friend.

Why didn't you file a complaint?

Between "a 16 year old girl (and) Nicolas Hulot, who was going to believe me?", She answers.

"Dysfunction"

Cécile was on contract in September 1998 at the French Embassy in Moscow, she said.

Then 23 years old, she is asked to help the Ushuaia team and its star host to unlock filming equipment stuck in customs.

To thank her, Nicolas Hulot invites her to dinner with the team.

Cécile comes back in detail on this evening, in Special Envoy.

She is in a taxi with Nicolas Hulot.

“He's throwing himself on me, he's trying to kiss me,” and touches her breasts and crotch, she says.

"I hit as best I could, (...) I think the + no + was very clear".

File a complaint?

"In Russia? In Moscow? Against a friend of President Jacques Chirac? No, that did not occur to me," said Cécile.

The other woman interviewed said to have worked with Nicolas Hulot in 2001. At the end of their first working meeting, he "kisses me full on the lips", according to his words.

"It is necessarily by force since it is by surprise".

She specifies that the former host has not started again.

Claire Nouvian says she was warned before the filming of a report made with Nicolas Hulot in 2008, so that she avoids being alone with him.

The host did not make inappropriate gestures during the filming of this episode of Ushuaia, she recounts.

On another occasion, "he still tried to kiss me", she adds, referring to "a dysfunction in his relationship with women".

Nicolas Hulot formally denied these accusations on Wednesday, on the set of BFMTV.

"These assertions are false," he said, regretting not having been able to watch the Special Envoy's program before its broadcast.

"There is also no ongoing investigation into these facts," insisted his lawyer Alain Jakubowicz in an interview with Point Thursday.

"Doubt must benefit the accused".

Elise Lucet says, she, having proposed to Nicolas Hulot and his lawyers to watch the report "with blurred faces", so that the former minister presenter presents his version of the facts.

But they "refused".

© 2021 AFP