Accused of sexual assault, Pierre Ménès placed in police custody

Europe 1 with AFP 11:17, December 09, 2021, modified at 11:23, December 09, 2021

The former Canal + star columnist Pierre Ménès, targeted by an investigation for sexual assault, was placed in police custody on Thursday, said the Paris prosecutor's office and sources close to the case, confirming information from the

.

He has been heard since Thursday morning at the 1st judicial police district (1st DPJ), "at the request of the prosecution," said a source close to the case.

His lawyer, Me Arash Derambarsh, declared that Pierre Ménès, who had asked in the media to be interviewed, was of course "under the status of police custody". At the end of the PSG-Nantes match on November 20 in Paris, a woman reported to the police acts of sexual assault for which Pierre Ménès would be responsible, without filing a complaint. The same day, the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation.

"We have so far six testimonies that clear Pierre Ménès and we have filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation," said his lawyer Thursday.

Pierre Ménès produced three attestations from people "unanimously confirming that (he) spent all of his time by their side as soon as he arrived for the cocktail in the lodge, during the match and the post-match cocktail", according to the complaint consulted by AFP.

Sidelined after the airing of a documentary on sexism

Sidelined at the end of March after accusations of sexual assault, the 58-year-old former columnist of the "Canal Football Club" left the encrypted channel on July 1, ending nearly 12 years of collaboration. This departure is the consequence of the broadcast on March 21 on Canal + of a documentary on sexism in sports editors and the revelation of incriminating sequences, cut during the editing at the request of the channel, suspected of having protected him.

Pierre Ménès, 58, is notably accused of having lifted off the air in 2016 the skirt of journalist Marie Portolano, co-director of the documentary.

He says he does not remember it because of serious health problems at the time: a non-alcoholic cirrhosis which kept him away from the plateaus for seven months and required a double transplant of the liver and a kidney.

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