This is new testimony, solid and documented, which could revive the PPDA affair. Because the victim declared here was a minor at the time of the facts, and these are facts that can be qualified as rape, even if the case seems time-barred *. Caroline ** is now 49 years old, she only crossed paths with the TF1 star once, in 1988, at the age of 16. And this unique meeting marked her for life, in her flesh.
At that time, she was already passionate about theater and writing. Resourceful for her age, she used to contact actors and actresses for her presentations. She wants to talk to Francis Huster, and thinks the TV presenter must know him. She therefore writes to PPDA, who answers her, and who offers her later by telephone, after having chained “more and more intimate” questions according to her testimony, to invite her to her television show. To insanity.
“I try to push him away a bit, but I’m paralyzed”
At that age, Caroline is completely new to sexual matters. She kissed two boys in her life, that’s all. She is therefore embarrassed by the star’s inappropriate questions (“Would you like to have sex with Francis Huster?”) To which she responds by saying that she has never had sex, but also curious to go to a meeting. TV show. She lives in a small village in Beauce, and the capital of the capital and television attracts her. She therefore left on June 19, by train, with the permission of her parents, and accompanied by two high school friends, for Paris. The show is in the middle of the afternoon, live, at the French production company of Buttes-Chaumont. Mylène Farmer, Omar Sharif and Arielle Dombasle are the guests. At the end of the show, the host signs dedications, then invites her to follow her to the dressing rooms. A photo attests to this meeting, where we see the 41-year-old TV star and the young girl in a salmon sweatshirt, side by side. An autograph also, “For ***, in friendly homage”, with today’s date.
Caroline waits in the hallway, while part of the team is busy. People come out of the boxes, she remains alone before the presenter invites her to enter. She says: “He lets me in, and he locks the door. He doesn’t jump on me right away. He asks me a few questions. It becomes urgent. He’s getting closer. He tries to kiss me several times. I try to push him away a bit, but I’m paralyzed. I have images that come back to me. I see myself on the floor. I see it in front of me. One detail that speaks volumes: he knew I was a virgin. When he entered me, the hymen was no longer there. He said to me: “Ah, but you are no longer a virgin”, with a disappointed air. Several times in his books, PPDA has indicated his taste for virgin women. “I like virgin land, I like to penetrate them because I believe I am immune to impurity”, he writes for example in The women of my life.
After that, the teenager says she found herself alone in the halls of the production company. PPDA does not accompany her, does not guide her. Caroline walks in the corridors, looking haggardly for the exit, which she ends up finding. His two high school friends are there. This small world leaves again in Beauce, and Caroline stays a long time with this heavy secret. She talks about it to a few friends, but without mentioning what she really experienced. By telling it “like his first time”. Her girlfriends don’t believe her, so rape? Her education collapsed, she had to pass the bac three times, she says.
“A satyr at TF1”
Caroline is ashamed, she can’t seem to tell her parents about it, so she finds a ploy. His parents read the newspaper Minute and the teenager thinks that if she tells her story to a reporter for the weekly, there is a chance her parents will come across the article. So she tells Jean Roberto what happened to her, and the journalist makes a paper, anonymized, named A satyr at TF1, and publishes the letter sent to her by the teenager, in February 1989. Caroline already told:
He makes more and more pressing proposals to me. He touches me, he kisses me. To cry out ? Who would hear me? I reject his advances until the moment when… Rape? The word is too strong and often misused. Hijacking a minor? Certainly, completely, absolutely… (…) File a complaint? I fear the judgments and reactions of others? And then, who would believe me? What do I have left? The nervous breakdown. “
We tracked down this reporter, who confirmed to 20 minutes the whole story, and that it was indeed PPDA.
Lack of self-confidence, complicated sex
Her parents would later learn of the existence of this article through the daughter of one of their friends, whom Caroline had confided in. Their reaction: to overwhelm him with reproaches. “You could have made us sell the house”; his mother told him. This trauma, coupled with a lack of recognition, left Caroline with serious scars: complicated love relationships and painful sex, lack of self-confidence. This is confirmed by her friend Jessica, who was her colleague for seven years, to whom Caroline confided: “I saw her shell and this disenchantment with oneself, and the way in which she respects her body: she was a young woman. girl who did not have a weight problem, and today she has this problem of overweight, neglect of herself, in relation to her teeth, a lot of things. “
Caroline confided in Jessica in January. Her friend remembers that day when “Caroline was in a completely unusual state”, after a discussion on the complaint of Gérard Louvin’s nephew against his uncle. “There is someone else, it would be nice if that came out too,” she told him, before letting go. “I felt like she had survived by telling the story to herself in a liveable way, and I felt that she realized it as she told it to me. I felt it was like lifting the ban at that age, ”says Jessica. Today, the ban has been lifted, even if Caroline is not yet ready to file a complaint.
An investigation for rapes targeting Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was closed at the end of June, after four months of investigation, eight complaints and the testimonies of 23 women. Several women had also described in February in 20 minutes and on social networks to have been subjected to insistent invitations, even facts relating to sexual harassment, on his part. The person concerned has always denied these allegations.
Contacted by 20 minutes, the lawyer of the former star of the JT of TF1, Jacqueline Laffont, did not wish to take cognizance of this testimony, but wrote to us this: “I believe that no one can ignore the constant position of Patrick Poivre d ‘Arvor with regard to the charges against him, nor the judicial outcome of the proceedings against him. I therefore have nothing to add to that, a fortiori insofar as I unfortunately noted in this case the scant regard given by your colleagues, both to the few answers that we had given them and to the evidence that we had produced and that we will continue to produce. “
* The limitation period for rape of a minor is 30 years from the age of majority of the victim, unless the declared victim can assert a cause for suspending this period
** The first name has been changed at his request