Sexual violence: several women testify against Nicolas Hulot in “Special Envoy”

Published on : 26/11/2021 – 14:30

Caresses or kisses by surprise, attempted forced fellatio: in a 62-minute long report, broadcast during the evening of Thursday, November 25 on France 2 in “Special Envoy”, three women took the floor and accused Nicolas Hulot of rape and sexual assault. Two of them, Sylvia and Cécile, spoke with their faces uncovered. A third, posing as a former collaborator, did so anonymously.

The investigation also included the testimony of the environmental activist Claire Nouvian and returned to the complaint for rape filed in 2008 by Pascale Mitterrand, granddaughter of the former President of the Republic; this was dismissed because the facts, dating back to 1997, were time-barred.

“Between a 16-year-old girl and Nicolas Hulot, who would believe me ? “

Sylvia says she was sexually assaulted in 1989, at the age of 16, by Nicolas Hulot. She says she was invited to attend a show he hosted in Paris. The man engaged in ecological issues would then have offered to drive her back to a metro station but would eventually drive her to an open-air parking lot. “And there, he takes out his penis (…), he took my hand, he asked me if I had already done it with boys”, says Sylvia. “He’s forcing me to give him a blowjob that I’m not actually doing because I think I’m paralyzed.”

She adds that she did not mention it until much later to her mother and a friend. Why didn’t you file a complaint? Between “a 16-year-old girl (and) Nicolas Hulot, who was going to believe me?”, She replies.

Cécile was on contract in September 1998 at the French Embassy in Moscow, she said. Then 23 years old, she is asked to help the team of the show “Ushuaïa” and its star host to unlock filming equipment stuck in customs. To thank her, Nicolas Hulot invites her to dinner with the team. Cécile goes back in detail on this evening.

She is in a taxi with Nicolas Hulot. “He throws himself on me, he tries to kiss me,” then touches her breasts and crotch, she says. “I hit as best I could, (…) I think the ‘no’ was very clear.” File a complaint? “In Russia? In Moscow? Against a friend of President Jacques Chirac? No, that did not occur to me,” says Cécile.

A four-year investigation

The other woman interviewed said to have worked with Nicolas Hulot in 2001. At the end of their first work meeting, he kisses her “full on the lips”, according to his words. “It is necessarily by force since it is by surprise.” She specifies that the former host has not started again.

Claire Nouvian says she was warned, before the filming of a report made with Nicolas Hulot in 2008, so that she avoids being alone with him. The host did not make inappropriate gestures during the filming of this episode of “Ushuaia”, she relates. On another occasion, “he still tried to kiss me”, adds Claire Nouvian, referring to “a dysfunction in his relationship with women”.

On the set of the show “C à vous” of France 5, two hours before the broadcast of the report on France 2, the host of “Special Envoy”, Élise Lucet, explained the genesis of this televised investigation. “After the Weinstein affair (…), we heard about a story of a woman who claimed to be harassed, assaulted by Nicolas Hulot, long before the first testimonies concerning him,” she explained. The report is “the result of four years of work”.

“I’m leaving my contract, it’s too heavy paid”

On Wednesday, the former Minister of Ecological Transition had anticipated the broadcast of “Special Envoy” and fiercely denied these accusations on BFMTV. He had also announced his withdrawal from public life. “I am going to leave the honorary presidency of my foundation, to protect them from dirt. (…) I am leaving public life for good because I am disgusted. (…) Why perpetuate a reputation that makes me suffer this that a man can suffer worse? “

“Neither from near nor far, I have committed these acts, these statements are false. (…) I have never forced anyone”, he hammered, denouncing a “system which is losing its reason “, prescriptions which deprive him” of the right to an investigation “and a” justice which moves on the television sets “. “I am leaving my commitment, I will not speak any more, it is too heavy paid,” said Nicolas Hulot again.

In February 2018, the magazine Ebdo (which has since ceased to appear) published a controversial investigation reporting a rape complaint filed ten years earlier against the former TV host and dismissed. Also mentioned was a rumor of sexual harassment against a former employee of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation who had herself denied.

Regarding the facts mentioned in “Special Envoy”, Me Alain Jakubowicz, Nicolas Julot’s lawyer, recalls in the weekly Le Point that there is “no investigation in progress” and that “the doubt should benefit the accused “. The journalist Élise Lucet, for her part, confides having proposed to the host and his lawyers to watch the report “with blurred faces”, so that the former minister presents his version of the facts, but they “refused”.

From now on, Nicolas Hulot wants to “get away from this world (which he) no longer recognizes”. The Foundation for Nature and Man, which he created in 1990, refuses to comment on a case which touches on the “fundamental question” of the liberation of women’s speech, and says it is “resolved to continue its action. for ecology and social justice “.

With AFP