In this complaint, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor castigates the "lot of excesses and excesses" of the #MeToo movement, according to passages published by France info.

He also describes "a return of puritanism and censorship, cleverly adorned with the supposed protection of women".

In his eyes, the 16 accusers are women "rejected or ignored", nourishing a "bitterness which leads them to commit, by belated revenge, the offense of slanderous denunciation".

"We cannot accuse falsely and with impunity", commented to AFP the lawyer for Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, Philippe Naepels, who filed a complaint with civil action, a procedure which almost systematically provokes the referral of an examining magistrate.

Hélène Devynck, one of the women targeted by this complaint, denounced an "inversion of guilt" and a "gag procedure" which "makes the victims the culprits", and is based on "domination by money": "We don't necessarily have all the means to afford lawyers," she told AFP.

The rape complaint of Ms. Devynck, journalist and screenwriter, had been dismissed in June 2021 for prescription.

"I'm waiting for this gag procedure (slanderous denunciation) to turn into a trial and for us all to be able to take the stand. It's going to be difficult to make people believe that 16 women are lying," she added.

The PPDA affair broke out in February 2021 when the writer and journalist Florence Porcel filed a complaint, accusing the former presenter of having forced him to have sex in 2004 and fellatio in 2009.

A preliminary investigation was then conducted for four months by the Nanterre prosecutor's office, during which 23 women testified.

The majority of the facts denounced being prescribed, the investigation had been closed without further action in June.

The PPDA complaint against Ms. Porcel, for slanderous denunciation, had also been dismissed.

At the end of November, Ms. Porcel was a civil party in order to cause the referral to a judge to investigate again the non-prescribed facts that she denounces.

The judicial investigation, opened in December 2021, is ongoing.

A second investigation is also carried out in Nanterre, this time by prosecutors, after the complaint of a woman who accuses the journalist and writer of having raped her during the Cannes festival in 1985, when she was 23 years old.

Facts appearing prescribed.

© 2022 AFP