The former star football columnist Pierre Ménès, whose trial for "sexual assault" has just been postponed to 2023, said he was innocent in the newspaper

Le Parisien

, describing in particular as "pure invention" the accusations of a receptionist at the Parc des Princes.

“I never approached this woman, near or far.

It's a pure invention, ”he said in this interview published online Wednesday evening.

The 58-year-old sports journalist is being prosecuted after several separate charges.

First, alleged "touching" in the chest and stomach reported to the police by this hostess after the PSG-Nantes match on November 20 in Paris.

The woman had not filed a complaint and was not present or represented at the hearing on Wednesday, where the trial was postponed until March 8, 2023.

The accused and the defense absent from the hearing

“I am in correctional for an empty file, with no one in front.

I don't understand.

It hurts me a lot, ”he has the former big mouth of Canal +.

The journalist, who had filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation, was himself absent from the hearing after having "spent three weeks in intensive care" due to an infection.

On Wednesday, he was also to answer for the so-called “Nike” affair.

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.

Ménès describes a "torso against torso" in the basketball department

According to the investigation site, this complaint had been dismissed on January 17, 2019. According to

Le Parisien

, a second saleswoman from this store accused the journalist of similar facts, which led to him being summoned by the Paris public prosecutor's office with a view to a reminder of the law.

In both cases, these penal orientations were revised after the facts of the Parc des Princes, underlines

Le Parisien

.

Mr. Ménès categorically disputes it.

“It was in the basketball department.

So I did what basketball players do, chest to chest, in a sort of check.

That's what we call sexual assault, ”he told Le Parisien, referring to one of the two cases.

The journalist had left Canal + on July 1 after the broadcast in the spring of 2021 of a documentary on sexism in the newsrooms, with incriminating sequences, cut during editing at the request of the channel, suspected of having protected him.

Company

The trial of Pierre Ménès for "sexual assault" postponed

Miscellaneous facts

Various facts: an investigation opened against Pierre Ménès on his actions at Canal +

  • Soccer

  • Pierre Menes

  • sexual assault

  • Princes Park

  • Sport