This is a late but essential admission: the management of TF1 “necessarily missed something” regarding its former star presenter Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, indicted for rape, admitted Thursday November 7, 2024 Robert Namias, director of channel information between 1996 and 2008.
“The context was not the same” but “despite everything, we missed something,” said the former manager before the commission of inquiry into sexual violence in cinema and audiovisual. “We did not imagine for a moment that there could be such crimes committed at TF1,” he said under oath.
A protected serial rapist?
“It’s a huge wound that opened in November 2021” during the revelations on this file, he underlined, while some victims believe that the management of TF1 would have “protected” its former star presenter.
Herself a former journalist at LCI, a channel of the same group, MP Estelle Youssouffa (Liot group) thus affirmed that “the harassment (of PPDA) was perfectly well known”.
In total, more than 40 women testified in court against the former news presenter of Antenne 2 then TF1, aged 77, who contests the accusations of rape and sexual assault.
70 to 80 women accuse the journalist
A first judicial investigation was opened in 2021, in Nanterre, after a complaint with the constitution of a civil party from the author Florence Porcel, who accuses PPDA of having raped her twice. He was indicted in December 2023 for one of these rapes.
“Poivre presented the newspaper for twenty years” and “we are talking about 70 to 80” women publicly accusing him, including a few collaborators of the channel – and not always for attacks in his office but outside –, noted Mr. Namias.
“I was never informed of anything,” the former manager insisted, “and if we had any conviction, he should have left the company immediately.”
Mysterious “search” of the PPDA office
Questioned about a visit by police officers to the presenter's office in the TF1 tower after a rape complaint filed in June 2005 (and closed shortly after), Mr. Namias denied having any knowledge of it: “there was no has no trace of this visit.
Revealed in October by The Worldthis complaint was filed by Caroline Merlet, 29 years old at the time, who had attended the television news. The host was then interviewed by the Hauts-de-Seine judicial police.
Our “Sexual violence” file
Mr. Namias also assured that he did not “remember” any reports of harassment from “Poivre”. However, he recognized that “in the years 1980-1990, even 2000, we did not have at all the same approach to these questions of sexual harassment”.
