The investigation into the accusations of sexual violence targeting Patrick Poivre d’Arvor has taken a decisive turn in recent days. As revealed by the JDD, the former star presenter of the 20 Hours of TF1 was heard at length on Tuesday by the police of the brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP) under the regime of free hearing. According to our information, PPDA has formally denied having forced sex on Florence Porcel, a 37-year-old writer and columnist who accuses her of having raped her in 2004 and 2009 against a backdrop of hold and abuse of power. The 73-year-old journalist had met the 36-year-old young woman on several occasions when she was a student: she had asked her for writing advice and he had invited her into his office.
Investigators from the Paris judicial police have also received photocopies of many disturbing messages signed by Florence Porcel at a time contemporary to her accusations of rape. They were submitted by PPDA as part of its complaints for “slanderous denunciation” against the writer and “defamation” against several media, including Le Parisien, but are extracted from exchanges between Florence Porcel and another novelist, Martine P. The latter had won the “PPDA prize”, a writing competition which was organized by the journalist and which rewarded the best news.
Fascination, fantasies and disillusions
In their conversations, according to a source close to the investigation, Florence Porcel and Martine P. seem fascinated by PPDA and discuss in a very raw way about the sexual acts of submission that they say they dream of having with the presenter. The two women met in 2006 on an Internet forum during discussions about the journalist’s current affairs and maintained correspondence on Facebook and by e-mail until 2011, two years after the second alleged rape denounced by Florence. Porcel – an imposed fellatio in the offices of the PPDA production company in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine).
According to our information, the compromising conversations transmitted by Patrick Poivre d’Arvor to the police officers do not nevertheless reflect the entirety of the exchanges between the two women. In other posts, they also complain about the inappropriate behavior of the star presenter and express in stern words their animosity towards him. At the time, Florence Porcel would, for example, use the term “rape” to describe her 2009 meeting with PPDA. The conversations between the two ex-friends reveal a mixture of feelings, between fantasies, fascination, anger and accusations.
Will these new elements weaken or reinforce the complainant’s story? Florence Porcel should be questioned again soon on these exchanges as well as on the testimony of PPDA in the presence of her lawyers, Me Emmanuel Moyne and Joséphine Doncieux. When filing a complaint, she accused the journalist of having imposed a relationship under the influence of her by using her status and taking advantage of her inexperience and young age. As for the novelist Martine P., she has already been heard in April by investigators. She herself reportedly had intimate relationships with the journalist in the past. Her links with Florence Porcel have deteriorated in recent years, to the point that she threatened her on social networks when the complaint filed by the columnist was revealed before deleting her messages.
At the same time, according to our information, two new women have filed a complaint against the former glory of the 20 Hours. One for “rape” emanating from Hélène Devynck, a 54-year-old former journalist who was one of the assistants of PPDA at TF 1. In her story related to Le Monde, she explained that she was forced to have a sexual relationship. with the journalist in the early 1990s for fear of professional repercussions. “I gave in. But I clenched my teeth, and stifled my tears. It was really humiliating. I had no choice, otherwise I was no longer working, ”she described, referring to“ an industrialized system ”of abuse of a dominant position.
The second complainant is a woman who, for her part, accuses Poivre d’Arvor of “sexual harassment” for repeated advances.
It nevertheless appears that for the first complaint as for the second, the facts denounced are subject to limitation. According to a source close to the investigation, the police have interviewed more than thirty people since the opening of the preliminary investigation for “rapes” last February: former colleagues, assistants, entourage … Among them, others women who spontaneously denounced sexual violence on the part of the presenter, without filing a complaint.
In this very delicate investigation, which explores the gray area of consent, the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office will, at the end of the investigations, have to carry out a legal analysis to determine whether the accusations brought by Florence Porcel, the only woman to denounce assaults not prescribed to date, are likely to be qualified as rape by moral or physical constraint. And if there is indeed “a PPDA system”. In which case, the journalist could be subject to police custody and prosecution. Otherwise, the investigation could be discontinued.
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