The decision was expected, the facts denounced dating back to 1989. The investigation for rape and sexual assault on a minor targeting the former television host and former Minister of Ecological Transition Nicolas Hulot was dismissed for prescription of public action , said the Paris prosecutor’s office on Monday, September 12, confirming information from BFM-TV.
This investigation was opened on November 26, 2021 after the broadcast by Special Envoy of a documentary in which six women accused Mr. Hulot of sexual violence which allegedly took place between 1989 and 2001. One of them was a minor at the time of the facts she denounced, pushing the prosecution to launch investigations, in particular to verify that there were no other minor victims.
This woman, named Sylvia, recounted in the documentary, with her face uncovered, having been sexually assaulted in 1989, at the age of 16, by Nicolas Hulot in the latter’s car, after having been invited to attend a program that he then hosted in Paris. Following the broadcast, she had filed a complaint against the host and had been heard by the investigators shortly after the opening of the investigation.
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“We have no comment to make regarding this expected decision to dismiss a prescribed and disputed complaint without further action”reacted the lawyers of the former host of the famous television program on the environment “Ushuaïa”, Jacqueline Laffont and Alain Jakubowicz.
“This dismissal does not eliminate the facts clearly described by Sylvia who was 16 years old in 1989: it intervenes for prescription reasons of which my client was perfectly aware”commented on Monday his lawyer, Me Maud Sobel. In a circular of February 2021, the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, had requested that at the end of the preliminary investigations, the classification due to “prescription” occurs ” uniquely (…) when the facts revealed or denounced in the procedure do indeed constitute an offence, but the time limit set by law for judging them has passed.. “When at the end of the investigations, the offense does not appear to have been constituted, this is the reason “insufficiently characterized offence” even “absence d’infraction” which must be ticked, even when the facts falsely denounced would have been prescribed”continued the instruction of the Chancellery.
Five other testimonials
In the documentary, five other women testified to facts ranging from surprise kisses to an attempt at forced fellatio. Among them, the environmental activist Claire Nouvian said that she had been warned by those around her ” Politics “ by Nicolas Hulot before filming in 2008, so that she avoids being alone with him.
Two other women, the former host Maureen Dor and a former employee of TF1, had for their part transmitted to “Special Envoy” written testimonies concerning sexual assaults. A former Europe Ecologie-Les Verts activist, Pauline Lavaud, then reported on BFM-TV that she had been excluded from Nicolas Hulot’s campaign for the party’s internal primary in 2011 because she “excited him too much”.
The host denies the accusations
The former host of the famous television program on the environment “Ushuaïa” was heard last May by investigators from the brigade for the protection of minors (BPM) in Paris as part of a free hearing. He categorically denies the accusations and has announced that he will leave ” definitively “ public life, to protect his loved ones and his foundation from the fallout of a “lynching”.
The former host had already been targeted by sexual assault charges in 2018, when he was still in government. Appointed Minister of Ecological Transition during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, he resigned at the end of August 2018, denouncing the lack of progress on environmental issues.
The weekly Ebdo had revealed a few months earlier that the ex-host had been the subject in 2008 of a complaint for a rape committed in 1997, dismissed due to prescription. The complainant turned out to be Pascale Mitterrand, granddaughter of François Mitterrand. Nicolas Hulot had also rejected these accusations.