There is something new in the PPDA affair. According to information from Médiapart, the investigating judges of the Nanterre judicial court (Hauts-de-Seine) must hear, by the end of the year, the ten women who have become civil parties in the wake of Florence Porcel, the plaintiff at the origin of the case targeting Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, the former star presenter of TF1. Some of them have already been heard by the magistrates.
Eleven women are civil parties in this case, recalls the investigative media. All denounce rape and sexual assault on the part of the former TV presenter. For only four of them, the facts do not seem prescribed. For the others, their complaints had initially been dismissed as time-barred at the preliminary investigation stage. But the Code of Criminal Procedure allowed them to take legal action again via the constitution of a civil party, which entails the appointment of an investigating judge.
As a reminder, this investigation was opened in December 2021 following the complaint with civil party filing by Florence Porcel, the first woman to have made public accusations against PPDA. The author filed a complaint for two rapes committed in 2004 and 2009. Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was indicted in December 2023 for one of these rapes.
Relieved but stressed
The complainants interviewed by our colleagues said they were relieved but stressed, almost a year and a half after filing their complaint. “These hearings are demonstration that the attackers are not sheltered behind the prescription like behind an armored door,” believes Hélène Devynck, who accuses PPDA of having raped her in 1993. “But to get there, we ask the victims for energy, expertise, means which almost certainly discourage,” she explains to Mediapart. The journalist and author is summoned to the judges this Thursday, October 30.
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Journalist Stéphanie Khayat was heard this Wednesday “for the first time by the courts” after her hearing with the police officer in charge of the preliminary investigation, regarding the rapes of 1994 and 1997 that she denounced. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, and I’m dreading it too. The judge will ask me to recount again, and in the smallest detail, the rapes I suffered. It’s a challenge, but it’s necessary. I have confidence in justice,” she assures Médiapart.
For Margot Cauquil-Gleizes, “the fact of finally being heard by the courts is already a very important step forward for me, on a personal level and with a view to reconstruction”, shares the teacher who must be heard at the end of November concerning the facts she denounces, namely a rape in 1985, in Sète, when she was 17 years old, then an attempted rape seven years later, at the age of 24, in the PPDA office in TF1.
Justine Ducharne, also summoned at the end of November, is awaiting this hearing “impatiently”. She also testified to the police in 2021, to denounce a rape that she allegedly suffered in the presenter’s office at TF1, in 1995, when she was 19 years old. “At the time, it was only to support Florence Porcel’s words. I didn’t worry about myself, the consequences that the facts had had on me, I didn’t go into details. Today, it is essential for me to do it. I have immense confidence in justice. », she confides to the investigative media.
Two other hearings have already taken place this month. In total, more than forty women testified in court against the former news presenter of Antenne 2 then TF 1, aged 77, who contests the accusations of rape and sexual assault and remains presumed innocent.