“We obviously missed something” concedes a former TF1 manager

The management of TF1 “necessarily missed something” regarding its former star presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, indicted for rape, admitted Thursday Robert Namias, the former director of 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.

“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 protected its former star.

MP Estelle Youssouffa (Liot group), herself a former journalist at LCI, a channel of the same group, thus affirmed that “the harassment (of PPDA) was perfectly well known”.

On I paid the price and I’m not the only one.” “Recognizing this is progress,” she stressed.

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.

A first judicial investigation was opened in 2021 in Nanterre after a complaint with the creation 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 20 years” and “we are talking about 70-80” women publicly accusing him, including few collaborators of the channel and not always for attacks in his office, but outside, noted Mr. Namias.

“I was never informed of anything” and “if we had had the slightest conviction, he should have left the company immediately,” insisted the former manager.

Asked 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 is no record of this visit.”

Revealed in October by “Le Monde”, this 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.

Mr. Namias also assured that he did not “remember” any reports of harassment from “Poivre”. However, he recognized that “in the 80s and 90s or even 2000s, we did not have at all the same approach to these questions of sexual harassment”.