In an interview with the daily Le Parisien, Pierre Ménès broke his silence on Wednesday after his sexual assault trial was postponed to March 8, 2023. Accused of three alleged sexual assaults, the former Canal + columnist took the news badly.
“It’s been six months that the suspicion is on me. And six months that I am silent. And there, I resume for a year. Professionally, it harms me, because my image is tarnished. (…) It is terrible to play with people’s lives like that”, regrets the journalist, who denies having sexually assaulted a hostess at the Parc des Princes: “I have no version of the facts, since I never approached this woman, near or far. It’s a pure invention.”
He also mentions the two other accusations from two women working in a Nike store. “It was in the basketball department. So I did what basketball players do, chest to chest, in a kind of ‘check’. That’s what we call sexual assault. (…) For l he other saleswoman was on the 1st floor. It seems that I was unpleasant and haughty with her, and that I caressed her buttocks. (…) And when she came into confrontation at the 8th arrondissement police station, it was no longer the buttocks, it had become the lower back.”
Presented as “seriously ill” by his lawyers (see here), Ménès confirmed his health problems: “I spent three weeks in intensive care. I got out of it four weeks ago. It was linked to a general infection that affected my heart, my kidneys, my lungs , my brain. (…) The doctors are not yet sure what I have.”
