« VAre you a couple? Are you faithful? “Two questions that Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, star presenter of the TF1 8 p.m. news between 1987 and 2008, had taken to asking new recruits from the television channel. Without worrying too much about the answers. “It drew a first breach in professional relations. A personal, ambiguous intrusion, a destabilizing mark”, notes Hélène Devynck, former journalist, in her punchy book Impunity (Threshold), to be published on September 23. Over 270 pages, the author, former LCI journalist and ex-wife of Emmanuel Carrère, plunges the reader into the hell experienced by victims of rape. She describes with acuity the dysfunctions of TF1 which would have allowed PPDA to encircle its preys in the closed office which it had. The rape investigation targeting Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was dismissed in June 2021 for “prescription” or for “insufficient evidence”. For his part, the former journalist attacked in defamation almost all the women who accused him of rape.
Hélène Devynck took the time to meet the presenter’s victims. She weighs each word and forms each image to tell the ordeal experienced by all these women: shame, the balance of power in favor of the aggressor, anorexia… A media event pushed her to come out of her long silence. In March 2021, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is the guest of the show Daily on TMC, which belongs to TF1, which was his employer and that of the journalist. “For twenty-five minutes, without opponent, he cries out for injustice, denunciation, people’s court, lynching of social networks […]. Candid, he regrets the times when you could be charming, seductive, little compliments and little kisses on the neck. Hélène Devynck picks up her phone the next day to contact the police officer in charge of the PPDA file. She recounts these “sticky minutes”, that is to say her rape in 1993, to the Brigade of repression in the delinquency to the people (BRDP), specialized in the treatment of VIP suspects.
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He threw himself on me, a hand on a breast
“He threw himself on me, she writes, one hand on one breast, the other trying to get under an elastic of my panties, his tongue in my mouth […]. He entered his penis, a very narrow penis. He went back and forth a few times, not much […]. He ejaculated mumbling vaguely. […] I didn’t say a word. He rubbed himself against an inert body. It made him cum. I was nobody. I was that nothing. A victim of PPDA herself, Hélène Devynck ended up agreeing to come out of anonymity and reveal her nightmare despite the price to pay – insults, suspicions… In a chilling, pithy style, she denounces the system which contributes to stifling the speech in France. “Everything happens as if the French #MeToo were stumbling against a wall solidly cemented by a myth: women should know how to defend themselves. No woman assaulted as an adult has survived harmless from speaking out against a famous man. None. Never”, she notes in Impunity.
Beyond PPDA, Hélène Devynck accuses the TF1 group, a subsidiary of the Bouygues group, of having protected for years Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, dismissed in 2008. “We arrived in the news as a collective wound for TF1 […]. They chose to ignore us for as long as possible, then blame us and threaten punishment to those we had at hand. […]. Taking our testimonies seriously, thinking about what could have prevented the headquarters of TF1 from becoming a criminal place, was not the option chosen, ”she regrets.
The question of the responsibility of TF1
In May 2022, Gilles Pélisson, current CEO of the TF1 group, mentioned the investigation into the PPDA affair of seven to eightbroadcast in December 2021, and confided to the Point “We salute the courage of these women who testify and we share their suffering. Today, everyone knows that TF1 applies zero tolerance to harassment and has put in place systems so that employees can express themselves with confidence. »
It is the past and not the news that challenges the author ofImpunity, which raises the question of the responsibility of the television channel, many of whose leaders repeated to him “I didn’t know”: “They didn’t know what exactly? That the most powerful editorial staff in France sheltered dozens of rapes and sexual assaults for decades? “And to continue further:” As if TF1 had not armed our attacker, offering him the framework, the status, the means he used to rape us. »
The PPDA case is not closed. If rapes have been committed since March 2007, the facts are not time-barred. In recent weeks, new testimonies have been pouring in. The daily Release has just revealed the stories of three women who accuse the former presenter of 20 hours of TF1 of rape and sexual assault. With her story and those of Cécile, Stéphanie, Chloé, Louise, Emmanuelle, Florence and so many others, Hélène Devynck hopes to put an end to the impunity of one of the most famous men on French television.
Helene Devynck, Impunity. To be published on September 23 at Le Seuil. The author will be a guest on the show The Great Bookstore September 21 on France 5.