Pierre Ménès was sentenced on Wednesday to a two-month suspended prison sentence. Tried for three sexual assaults, two in a Nike store in 2018 and a last one at the Parc des Princes in 2021, he was released in two out of the three cases. The court thus found the former Canal + columnist guilty for “part” of the facts concerning a saleswoman in a Nike store in 2018, but it acquitted him concerning a second saleswoman as well as an accusation of touching during a meeting. a match in the PSG stadium.
During the trial on March 8, the prosecutor had requested an eight-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 6,000 euros for “behavior which is criminally reprehensible” and which “corresponds to a kind of abuse of notoriety, of power “.
“Today, any gesture towards a woman is inappropriate”
At the helm, the journalist had dismissed the charges, regretting this current post #MeToo era in which, according to him, one can no longer put “a little pat on the shoulder of a woman” and where any kiss becomes suspicious. “Today, any gesture towards a woman is inappropriate, I speak to you with my experience, of what I have been living for two years”, insisted Ménès, 59 years old.
The former Canal Football Club columnist left the company in July 2021, ending almost twelve years of collaboration, after a scandal linked to the broadcast of the documentary “I am a journalist, I am not a slut” . Charges stemming from this documentary are being investigated in Nanterre for sexual assault and sexual harassment.