Sonia Souid accused Noël Le Graët of sexual harassment during an interview with BFMTV. The players’ agent told how the president of the French Football Federation had asked her insistently, and for years. Not without emotion.
When Noel Le Graet must be heard at the Ministry of Sports as part of the audit launched at the FFF, Sonia Souid breaks the silence at the microphone of BFMTV. The players’ agent, in an interview which will be broadcast in full this Tuesday, clearly accuses the president of the French Federation of sexual harassment.
A position which recalls the similar accusations of which the Breton leader is the subject of the FFF, in particular via SMS, and which he continues to deny vigorously.
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A breakfast at home alone
At the heart of the storm following inappropriate remarks vis-à-vis Zinedine Zidane, Noël Le Graët this time faces more serious accusations from Sonia Souid. After writing an email to the president of the FFF to find out her position on women’s football in 2013, she was invited by him to a breakfast at Le Murat (a restaurant located in Paris) in September of the same year. During their exchange, which lasts about an hour, the tricolor football boss asks him several times about her, personally, without this giving rise to any real concern in the young woman. A few months later, Noël Le Graët invites him to a new meeting, at his home, in order to introduce him confidentially to Brigitte Henriques… who will never come.
“I go to her apartment, when I arrive there is champagne. I am quite surprised but well I remain stoic and I wait. We exchange, we talk about women’s football. Except that Brigitte Henriques does not come, and besides, she will never come, says Sonia Souid for BFMTV. I don’t know if he warned her of this meeting. I don’t think so.”
“The president sees me as two breasts and an ass in fact”
Sonia Souid then recounted how this tete-a-tete had taken place at the home of President Le Graët and the leader’s first inappropriate advances.
“During this meeting, he told me clearly that if we were closer, my ideas would materialize, chained the agent during his testimony. In any case, he would be much more motivated to help me in this meaning. And there in fact, I take a huge slap. Because I have my president of the French Football Federation who sees me… While I feel competent and legitimate because I have managed to do things even in difficulty, excuse me for the term but my president sees me as two breasts and an ass in fact.
And Sonia Souid to specify, her eyes misted with tears: “I was disappointed by my president. For me, my president must be exemplary. And he was not.”
Souid denounces the “kingdom” of Le Graët at the FFF
In the words of Sonia Souid, the harassment she suffered from Noël Le Graët lasted for nearly four years. Several years when she perceived in him a feeling of omnipotence at the French Football Federation.
“Obviously I understood his personality. He is very seductive. He is a person who is very sure of himself and who believes that everything is allowed, again entrusted the agent to the microphone of BFMTV. hears about it, we really have the impression that he is the king and that the French Football Federation is his kingdom. But where are we? We are in France? There are things that I don’t understand. But hey …”
>> The full interview with Sonia Souid can be found in full this Tuesday on BFMTV