Four Moroccan women accuse French tycoon of sexual harassment

Yahoo – AFP, June 17, 2022 

Four women have pressed charges in Morocco against French insurance tycoon Jacques Bouthier, currently under arrest in Paris on charges of raping a minor, a rights group said Friday. 

Bouthier is accused of various acts of "people trafficking, sexual harassment and verbal and moral violence," between 2018 and this year, said Karima Salama, a lawyer from the Moroccan Association for the Rights of Victims (AMDV). 

"An enquiry has been opened and we have faith in the justice system," she said at a press conference in the northern port city of Tangiers, where the four alleged victims, aged from 26 to 28, had been employed by Bouthier's firm. 

Bouthier, 75 and one of France's richest men, is ex-CEO of insurance group Assu2000, later renamed Vilavi. 

Three of his Moroccan alleged victims told journalists on Friday about their experiences, using sanitary masks and dark glasses to hide their identities. 

"He asked to sleep with me and when I said no, he asked me to introduce him to a sister, a female cousin or a friend, saying he would give me a nice present in exchange," one said. 

The women said they had been sacked after refusing to "give in to harassment and blackmail" over their employment by Bouthier and other French and Moroccan executives. 

The women said they had faced repeated sexual harassment and intimidation as well as threats to their jobs, in a city where many struggle to find work. 

One said he had presented them to men working at the firm, telling them: 'If you bring in contracts, there will be beautiful Moroccan girls'. 

"Jacques Bouthier... believes that with his financial power he can get away with anything, in complete impunity," said AMDV chief Aicha Guellaa. 

Bouthier, was indicted on May 21 and arrested by Paris prosecutors after a preliminary investigation into accusations of people trafficking and rape of a minor. 

He is also being prosecuted for conspiracy to kidnap, kidnapping in an organised gang and possession of child pornography.

French ex-PM Fillon gets two-year term in fake job scandal

Yahoo – AFP, Juliette MONTESSE and Joseph SCHMID, June 29, 2020

The case against the Fillons was widely seen as a test of whether French politicians 
would now be held to account after decades of getting off lightly on charges of 
nepotism or financial misconduct (AFP Photo/Thomas SAMSON)

Paris (AFP) - A Paris court on Monday sentenced French former prime minister Francois Fillon to five years in prison, three suspended, for orchestrating a fake job for his wife in a scandal that cost him his shot at the presidency in 2017.

Fillon's wife Penelope was given a suspended three-year sentence for participating in the scheme that saw her paid over one million euros in public funds over a 15-year period.

The case was widely seen as a test of whether French politicians would now be held to account after decades of getting off lightly on charges of nepotism or financial misconduct.

Fillon and his wife were also ordered to pay fines of 375,000 euros ($423,000) each.

Presiding judge Nathalie Gavarino said Fillon, 66, pursued "personal enrichment" over the common good and "contributed to an erosion of public trust" in elected leaders.

A third defendant, Marc Joulaud -- who stood in for Fillon in parliament when he was a cabinet minister and who also hired Penelope Fillon as an assistant -- was given a suspended three-year sentence.

The three were ordered to collectively reimburse one million euros to the National Assembly, where Penelope supposedly worked as Fillon's parliamentary assistant from 1998 to 2013.

Facing two years behind bars, Fillon was allowed to leave the courthouse a free man, for now, after the couple's lawyers said they would appeal.

"Obviously, this ruling is not fair," Fillon's lawyer Antonin Levy said.

The couple did not make any statement to dozens of journalists gathered as they left the courthouse.

Francois and Penelope Fillon and another defendant have been ordered to reimburse 

the National Assembly for one million euros (AFP Photo/Eric FEFERBERG)

Swift downfall

The allegations that Fillon pilfered public coffers for years pummelled his image as an upright fiscal hawk promising to right the country's finances -- and loomed large in the "yellow vest" anti-government protests that rocked the country in 2018-2019.

A newspaper report on the fake job surfaced in January 2017, just after Fillon clinched the nomination from his rightwing Republicans party for a presidential race he was widely tipped to win.

It later emerged Fillon had used public money to pay two of his children a combined 117,000 euros for sham work while he was a senator, before becoming premier in the government of then-president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The court Monday convicted the couple on this charge too, and for Penelope's receipt of 135,000 euros for largely fictitious "consulting work" for the millionaire owner of a literary magazine.

Defence lawyers struggled at the trial this year to provide documented proof that she actually did any work -- and the head of the magazine, Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere, had already pleaded guilty to the fake job charges.

The court on Monday barred Fillon from holding public office for 10 years, while Penelope received a two-year ban.

If the ruling is upheld, she will have to abandon the local council seat she was re-elected to last March in the northern town of Solesmes.

(AFP Photo/Aurelia MOUSSLY, Laetitia PERON)

'Penelopegate'

Fillon's lawyers sought to have the trial restarted after the former head of the Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), Eliane Houlette, told lawmakers this month she had met with "pressure" to bring charges quickly against the ex-premier.

But the court rejected this request Monday, even though President Emmanuel Macron -- whose path was cleared by Fillon's downfall -- has asked for an investigation into the prosecutor's claims.

"Penelopegate," as the scandal became known, torpedoed the career of one of France's right-wing stars, who was the youngest member of parliament when first elected at just 27 years old.

Fillon met his Welsh-born wife while she was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the couple soon married and moved to an imposing country estate near Le Mans where they raised their five children.

Penelope Fillon told the court she spent a lot of time sorting her husband's mail, attending public events near their rural manor and gathering information for his speeches.

But investigators seized on a 2016 newspaper interview in which she said: "Until now, I have never got involved in my husband's political life."

Fillon insists he was set up for "political assassination" by his rivals and was the victim of a biased judiciary.

KLM withdraws plan to boost CEO bonus to 100% of salary

DutchNews, April 18, 2020

Photo: DutchNews.nl

 Airline KLM has dropped plans to increase the bonus of chief executive Pieter Elbers to 100% of his salary following widespread opposition, Dutch media reported on Saturday. 

The move, aimed at drawing Elbers’ salary more into line with that of Air France’s CEO, was also criticised by the Dutch government, which has a 14% stake in the Air France-KLM combine. 

According to broadcaster NOS, the plan has now been withdrawn from the agenda from next week’s AGM, a move supported by both Elbers and KLM’s supervisory board. 

Maximum 

Elbers earns €525,000 a year plus a maximum bonus of up to 75% of that. KLM wants to increase that to 100%, in line with the situation at the French arm of the country and set the process in motion last year. 

KLM has already said no bonuses will be paid this year and there will be no profit sharing or dividends until after the crisis is over.

KLM, which has asked for support to pay its permanent staff, has already let 2,000 people on flexible contracts go, despite the government’s call to keep them on. 

Conditions 

A finance ministry spokesman told broadcaster NOS earlier on Saturday that any eventual state support for the airline, which has seen ticket sales collapse because of coronavirus, would involve conditions about wages and bonuses. 

The Dutch and French finance ministries are thought to be supportive of a bail-out for the airline so that it can meet its fixed costs, now almost the entire fleet has been grounded.

Related Article:

Air France-KLM boss confirms he won’t take a bonus this year

Macron's candidate for Paris mayor quits race over sex tape

Yahoo – AFP, Ambre TOSUNOGLU, February 14, 2020

A website published a sex video and messages addressed to a woman which was said
to have come from the former government spokesman (AFP Photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE)

Paris (AFP) - Emmanuel Macron's candidate for Paris mayor, Benjamin Griveaux, withdrew from the race over a leaked sex video Friday, in a blow to the French president's party ahead of March local elections.

The 42-year-old MP said he opted to retreat to protect his family after a website published video excerpts of a man masturbating, accompanied by screengrabs of racy text messages, which it said came from the former government spokesman.

The images then spread on social media.

His swift exit marked a rare moment in a country where a politician's private life has long been considered out of bounds for the media, although there has been a hint of changing times.

France's interior minister vowed legal consequences for the unauthorised posting of the video, which was claimed by a controversial Russian activist and performance artist.

"After despicable attacks, I have decided to withdraw my candidacy," Griveaux said at AFP headquarters in Paris. "My family does not deserve this. No-one should ever be subjected to such abuse."

'Hypocrisy'

Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky told AFP he had put the video online in order to expose the ex-candidate's "hypocrisy", warning he planned to post more material on a newly-created "political porn platform".

"Benjamin Griveaux started his campaign with a monstruous lie, a disgusting hypocrisy, he used his family, his wife, his children to create a political image and present himself as an icon for all the fathers and husbands of Paris," he said.

Pavlensky made global headlines in 2013 after nailing his scrotum to Red Square in Moscow, and two years later doused the doors of the FSB secret police headquarters with petrol and set them on fire.

Even after winning asylum in France in 2017, Pavlensky and his partner in 2018 set fire to the entrance to the Bastille branch of France's central bank.

Having earlier told the Liberation newspaper that he got the images from a "source" who had a consensual relationship with Griveaux, he refused to divulge any further details about the video's origins.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner emphasised it was illegal to post videos without the consent of their author and warned violations could be punished by significant fines and up to two years' imprisonment.

Griveaux is a close political ally of Emmanuel Macron (AFP Photo/Thibault Camus)

'How low will we sink?'

The ambitious Griveaux helped found the president's Republic on the Move (LREM) party, but recent polls showed him trailing in third place in Paris, which Macron won comfortably in the 2017 presidential election.

Macron tapped Griveaux to be the LREM's Paris mayoral candidate, causing a rift in the party that led to the president asking rival Cedric Villani to step aside.

Villani refused, triggering his exclusion from the ruling party.

But with France unused to the sort of political sex scandals that have ended so many careers in Britain, there was near universal support from across the spectrum for Griveaux.

Villani said the "undignified attack" that led to Griveaux's withdrawal was a "serious threat to our democracy" and offered his support to the former candidate, his wife and children.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe expressed sympathy for Griveaux while government spokeswomen Sibeth Ndiaye bemoaned a "campaign of the lowest common denominator where all blows are allowed".

Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who leads the race in opinion polls, called for "the respect of privacy and of people".

Socialist figure and former culture minister Aurelie Filippetti wrote on Twitter: "How low will we sink in shame and abomination? We don't leave men to the dogs now but to rats in the lowest depths of the sewers."

Striking a different tone was far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen who said Griveaux had behaved "irresponsibly" while saying he could have been the victim of a "set-up".

'Better without me'

Wresting control of the capital would be a huge prize for Macron as he seeks to consolidate his base ahead of an expected re-election bid in 2022.

It would also help offset heavy losses he is expected to face in rural areas, where his policies have met fierce resistance and fired up the "yellow vest" protest movement.

His majority in parliament has also been hit by what the government admitted was a huge mistake when it voted down a proposed bill extending paid leave from work for parents who have lost a child.

One of Macron's closest political allies, Griveaux resigned as a junior minister and government spokesman in March last year to run for mayor.

Griveaux told AFP he had discussed the issue with Macron late Thursday, and that the president offered his support "whatever my decision".

As for the LREM's project for Paris, he said it would continue "better without me".

France opens probe into figure skating underage sex abuse claims

Yahoo – AFP, Andréa BAMBINO, Eleonore DERMY, 4 February 2020

French prosecutors hae opened an inquiry into allegations of underage sexual
abuse made by former world bronze medallist Sarah Abitbol (pictured) last week

French prosecutors said Tuesday they had opened an investigation into claims of rape and sexual abuse of minors in figure skating following claims made by a former world championship medallist.

The probe, hailed as a "strong signal" by French Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu and in which "the words of the victims must be heard", will focus on allegations made by skater Sarah Abitbol last week in her autobiography that she was raped by coach Gilles Beyer between the ages of 15 and 17.

"He (Beyer) started to do horrible things leading to sexual abuse and I was raped at 15," said Abitbol, now 44, in a video interview with L'Obs last week.

The inquiry will also "attempt to identify all the other victims who suffered... offences of the same nature", Paris-based prosecutor Remy Heitz said in a statement.

On the day that Abitbol's revelations emerged, sports daily L'Equipe published an investigation in which three other skaters accused Beyer and two other coaches, Jean-Roland Racle and Michel Lotz, of abuse and rape when they were minors.

Further allegations of underage sexual abuse emerged from former swimmers and tennis players.

On Friday, 62-year-old Beyer admitted to having had "intimate" and "inappropriate" relations, telling AFP he was "sincerely sorry" and apologising.

"I acknowledge having had intimate relationships with her," Beyer said in a statement.

"If my memories of the exact circumstances differ from hers, I am aware that, given my duties and her age at the time, these relationships were inappropriate."

Racle has denied the accusations while Lotz has not commented.

Calls for resignation

Abitbol's claims, which came on the heels of French tennis coach Andrew Geddes being jailed for 18 years for raping four underage players, gathered further pace on Monday when sports minister Maracineanu told Didier Gailhaguet to quit as president of France's ice skating federation.

French Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu has called on Didier Gailhaguet (right)

to step down as ice skating federation president in the wake of allegations of 

sexual abuse of minors within the sport

"The weight of facts and their continuation over time illustrate that a general dysfunction exists within the federation," she said.

"Didier Gailhaguet cannot absolve himself of his moral and personal responsibility, so I have asked him to assume all his responsibilities and resign."

Maracineanu, a former swimming world champion, does not have the power to sack Gailhaguet but intimated that the federation would face state sanctions if he remains. Gailhaguet is due to hold a press conference on Wednesday.

Gailhaguet admitted to "mistakes", but defended his record on this matter.

"She did not listen to me and she certainly didn't hear me," said the 66-year-old who has been the most influential man in French ice skating since he first became president in 1998, some years after the alleged offences.

On Tuesday, former Olympic champion Gwendal Peizerat, who won the 2002 ice dance gold with Marina Anissina, said the revelations were "the tip of the iceberg".

"We're talking about rape, harassment ... Didier Gailhaguet is not the moral example we should be showing our children," said Peizerat, who unsuccessfully challenged Gailhaguet as skating chief, told AFP.

Gailhaguet has been president ever since apart from a three-year hiatus between 2004 and 2007 which followed a judging scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

He was suspended by the International Skating Union for three years from 2002 and duly gave up, temporarily, the presidency of the French federation.

Gailhaguet's accession to the presidency in 1998 opened the door for Beyer to take charge of the French national team. At the start of the 2000s, another skater made a complaint against Beyer which was followed up at administrative level but not by the judiciary.

The investigation led the sports ministry to remove him from his technical role at the federation, but he remained a coach at club level and held an executive position at the federation until 2018.

Gailhaguet on Monday attempted to deflect blame for Beyer's return to the federation following that inquiry, turning it instead on former sports minister Marie-George Buffet, who he was careful not to name.

"She removed him from us and she returned him," he said.

Buffet dismissed Gailhaguet's accusation as "some fog to escape the depth of the case".

Underage rape probe opened into French author Matzneff

Yahoo – AFP, Eleonore DERMY, January 3, 2020

In the book "Consent", Springora describes how she was seduced at the age
of 14 by Matzneff (AFP Photo/Martin BUREAU)

Paris (AFP) - Paris prosecutors on Friday opened a rape investigation into the author Gabriel Matzneff, a day after the publication of a book detailing his sexual relationship with a girl of 14 over three decades ago.

The case has attracted huge interest in France, which is only now beginning to scrutinise attitudes after decades of what is seen by some as an overly permissive attitude towards sexual exploitation of women and paedophilia.

The probe was launched after an examination of the book "Consent", published on Thursday, where author Vanessa Springora describes a sexual relationship she had with Matzneff in the mid-1980s when he was 36 years her senior, Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said in a statement.

Heitz said the inquiry would focus on "rapes committed against a minor" aged under 15.

In "Consent", Springora, 47, now a leading publisher, describes how she was seduced at the age of 14 by Matzneff and how this left lasting scars.

Matzneff, an essay writer long admired by some in French literary circles, never made any secret of his preference for sex with adolescent girls and boys.

In the mid-1970s, he published a notorious essay called "Les Moins de Seize Ans" ("Those Less than 16").

'All other victims'

Springora had indicated she did not intend to bring a criminal complaint against Matzneff. But the Paris prosecutors used their power to open an investigation of their own accord.

Heitz said that beyond the events described by Springora, the investigation "will work to identify all other eventual victims who could have been subjected to crimes of the same nature in France or abroad".

In France it is against the law to have a sexual relationship with anyone under the age of 15.

Gabriel Matzneff has denounced Springora's book, saying it attempts to 

portray him as "a pervert, a manipulator and a predator." (AFP Photo/

Jacques DEMARTHON)

It is possible that investigations into Springora's evidence could be restricted by the statute of limitations, which in 2018 was extended to 30 from 20 years for this kind of crime but is not retroactive.

The book comes in the age of #MeToo as France wrestles with a series of accusations by women who say they were exploited by men who often held positions of power.

In one of the most prominent recent cases, French actress Adele Haenel accused film director Christophe Ruggia of constantly harassing her from the age of 12 to 15. She has since filed a complaint against him.

And the controversy has intensified around French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, a fugitive from US justice since 1978 when he admitted to statutory rape of a 13 year-old, after he brought out his new film "An Officer and a Spy".

'Not what we experienced'

Matzneff has denied any wrongdoing and in a lengthy statement sent to the L'Express magazine claimed that there had been an "exceptional love" between him and Springora, and that he did not "deserve the ugly portrait" that had been painted of him.

"No, this is not me, this is not what we experienced together and you know it," said the writer, now 83, denouncing a book that he says tries to portray him as "a pervert, a manipulator and a predator".

In 2013, Matzneff was awarded the Renaudot prize for his essays on international affairs and philosophy, an award one member of the jury has now conceded was a mistake.

"It is clear that he would not have got the prize for one of his intimate journals," jury member Frederic Beigbeder told the Parisien daily. "This prize was a blunder."

In the book Springora writes: "Aged 14, you are not supposed to have a 50-year-old man waiting for you when you leave school, you are not supposed to live in a hotel with him, or find yourself in his bed with his penis in your mouth when you should be having a snack."

Ahead of the book's publication, French ministers rounded on Matzneff, with Culture Minister Franck Riester saying "having a literary aura is not a guarantee of impunity."

Thousands in Brussels protest violence against women

Yahoo – AFP, 24 November 2019

Protesters placed red shoes on the ground as a symbol of the victims of
violence against women

Around 10,000 people took part in a protest march in Brussels on Sunday calling for an end to violence against women, police said, a day after similar demonstrations in France and Italy.

The protesters in the Belgian capital paid homage to women killed by partners or ex-partners, then marched to the Palace of Justice where they placed pairs of red shoes as a symbol of femicide victims.

"Belgium is a very complex country with many levels of power; federal, regional and communal and all these levels of powers do little things to tackle violence against women. But the main thing we are demanding is a national plan," said Celine Caudron, one of the organisers of the protest.

"It is important to punish the perpetrators but what we want most is that the violence doesn't happen in the first place."

The marchers held up placards bearing messages such as "That's enough" and "Not one more life".

Also prominent were the names of the 22 women killed by men in Belgium this year.

Outside the law courts building the demonstrators set off alarms and made noise as a "protest against the silence" which surrounds the deaths of battered women.

According to Mirabal, a Belgium umbrella group of organisation opposing violence against women, there have been 98 femicides in the country since 2017, a figure "which, in proportion to the population, is well above the average for European nations".

Tens of thousands marched in France and Italy on Saturday calling for an end to violence against women.

The marches came ahead of the UN-recognised International day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Monday.

French first lady forwarded Polanski rape accuser's letters to officials

Yahoo – AFP, Anne Pascale REBOUL, November 9, 2019

Polanski has been a fugitive from US justice for years (AFP Photo/Valery HACHE)

Paris (AFP) - French first lady Brigitte Macron forwarded two letters written to her by a former model who has accused Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski of raping her as a teenager to two members of the government, her office said Saturday.

Valentine Monnier on Friday became the latest woman to accuse the acclaimed Polish-French film director of rape, telling France's Le Parisien newspaper that the alleged incident occurred in 1975 when she was 18 at Polanski's chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Gstaad.

Following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Monnier said she had written letters about the alleged rape to Los Angeles police and to the French first lady as well as to the French Culture Minister Franck Riester and Secretary of State for Equality between Men and Women Marlene Schiappa.

Macron's office said they had found the 2018 letter in which Monnier complained that had had no response from Schiappa's office.

It said Monnier had been sent a reply in February last year stating "that Brigitte Macron cannot intervene in judicial processes" and copied that letter to Schiappa.

Monnier "wrote again in 2019 about the financing of a Polanski film by the culture ministry and we responded while copying it to Franck Riester," Brigitte Macron's office said.

Schiappa wrote to Monnier in March last year and hailed her courage "in daring to break the silence of 42 years" and adding that she understood her trauma while underscoring that such things were to be dealt by the judicial system.

Monnier told Le Parisien that the alleged rape was "extremely violent", adding that Polanski "pummelled me until I gave in and then raped me, making me do all sorts of things."

She said she recounted what had happened to her that very night to two women who were also staying in Polanski's chalet: her best friend and another woman who became Polanski's girlfriend for four years.

Both women were contacted by Le Parisien and confirmed Monnier's version.

Other accusations

Monnier, who acted in a few films in the 1980s, said she had finally decided to speak out as Polanski's new film about an error of justice was due to come out.

Polanski's lawyer Herve Temime said the director "firmly denies all accusations of rape," adding that the allegations "which date back 45 years have never been reported to judicial authorities".

Polanski has also been accused of sexual assault by others. In 2010, British actress Charlotte Lewis accused him of "sexually abusing" her in 1983 when she was 16.

Another woman, identified only as Robin, accused him in August 2017 of sexual assault when she was 16 in 1973.

In September 2017, former actress Renate Langer filed a new complaint alleging she had been raped by Polanski in 1972 when she was 15.

Polanski, who directed "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown", was accused of drugging a 13-year-old girl before raping her at film star Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles in 1977.

He admitted statutory rape after a number of more serious charges were dropped, and spent 48 days in custody to undergo psychiatric evaluation before being released.

In 1978, convinced a judge was going to scrap his plea deal and send him to prison for decades, Polanski fled to France and has been a fugitive from the US justice system ever since despite repeated attempts to have him extradited.

Plans for Polanski to preside over the Cesars, the French equivalent of the Oscars, were abandoned in 2017, amid the fall-out from "Me Too" movement that started with accusations of sexual assault against US producer Weinstein.

Although awarded the 2003 Best Director Oscar for "The Pianist", Polanski was expelled from the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018.

French bishops approve payouts for sex abuse victims

Yahoo – AFP, Karine Perret, November 9, 2019

French bishops said the size of the compensation scheme for abuse victims will
be unveiled following their next meeting in April (AFP Photo/PASCAL PAVANI)

Lourdes (France) (AFP) - French bishops on Saturday approved a programme of payouts to victims of sex abuse by priests -- but survivors have already objected that the Church has not gone far enough in admitting responsibility.

Voting at the bi-annual Conference of French Bishops (CEF) in the southern city of Lourdes, a large majority of the 120 bishops approved the payments to those who had suffered abuse within the Church.

The size of the payouts will be made will be determined at a meeting in April, conference chairman Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the archbishop of Reims, told reporters.

But any money paid was designed neither as compensation that would be determined by a court "or by canonical justice", nor as reparation.

But some victims said this did not go far enough.

"The word 'responsibility' of the Church does not appear, that really bothers me," said Jean-Luc Souveton, a priest and a member of the working group on the issue, who was himself abused by a priest when a child.

Michel, another priest who was also a victim but who did not want to give his full name, agreed with Souveton that the statement was not enough.

'Negligence, indifference'

But De Moulins-Beaufort, who is Archbishop of Reims, did acknowledge the "silence, negligence, indifference, an absence of reaction, bad decisions or dysfunctionality at the heart of the Church".

An independent commission set up by the Church to investigate the scandal started work in June.

Committee chairman Jean-Marc Sauve told AFP in September that they had received about 2,000 messages in its first three months.

Most of those who had come forward were older then 50, and two-thirds were men, he added. The committee is looking at allegations dating as far back as the 1950s.

On Saturday, another victim of abuse, Olivier Savignac, objected that the bishops had not waited for the findings of the independent commission.

"The bishops are getting around the recommendations of the ... commission so they don't have to face up to what is going to be a tsunami" of complaints, he said.

In May, Pope Francis passed a landmark new measure obliging anyone in the Church who knew about sex abuse to report it to their superiors.

A few months earlier, a French cardinal, Philippe Barbarin, received a six-month suspended jail sentence for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority. His case is up for appeal later this month.

In August, the Vatican's former number three, Australian Cardinal George Pell, lost his appeal against his conviction for sexually assaulting two 13-year-old choirboys at a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.

Ex-model accuses French Epstein associate of rape

Yahoo – AFP, September 7, 2019

A former Dutch model who accuses French modelling agent Jean-Luc
Brunel of rape says women and girls were abused in Epstein's appartment
near Paris's Champs-Elysees (AFP Photo/JACQUES DEMARTHON)

Paris (AFP) - A former model has accused a modelling agent close to US sex crimes suspect Jeffrey Epstein of raping her in 1990, as France pursues its own investigation into alleged offences on its territory.

In a letter sent to Paris Prosecutor Remi Heitz seen by AFP on Saturday, a 46-year-old Dutch woman says Jean-Luc Brunel drugged and raped her at his Paris appartment in the early 1990s, shortly after she turned 18.

French prosecutors opened an inquiry last month into suspected sex trafficking and alleged cases of rape and sexual abuse of women, including minors.

Brunel has emerged as a key figure in the scandal surrounding the US billionaire, who committed suicide in a New York jail last month.

Brunel has been accused in court documents of rape and of procuring young girls for Epstein, charges he has denied in the past.

But since Epstein's arrest in July -- just as he returned from a trip to Paris -- Brunel, formerly a high-power model scout, has not been heard from publicly.

In her letter, the former Dutch model said several girls lived in Brunel's apartment near the Champs-Elysees, where every day "rich businessmen were accompanied by very young girls."

"The events are beyond the statute of limitations, and my client knows this will not lead to charges against Mr Brunel," the woman's lawyer, Anne-Claire Le Jeune, told AFP.

"But she wanted to testify anyway, to help the inquiry move forward," she said.

It is also investigating claims that Epstein and others participated for years in a vast child sex-trafficking ring.

A French advocacy group for child sex abuse victims, Innocence En Danger (Innocence at Risk), has said 10 people had offered witness statements alleging sex crimes committed against minors in France.

According to the Parisian newspaper, Paris police last week questioned two other women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Brunel. These alleged offences happened too long ago for prosecution.

Four years ago, Brunel was accused in a civil lawsuit of rape and procuring young girls for the US financier.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who filed the suit, accused Epstein of using her as a "sex slave". She said she had been forced to have sex with well-known politicians and businessmen, including Brunel.

She also alleged that Brunel would bring girls as young as 12 to the United States and pass them on to his friends, including Epstein. Brunel fiercely denied the allegations.

Related Article:

Thysia Huisman describes alleged rape by Jean-Luc Brunel

Islamic scholar Ramadan targeted by new rape complaint

Yahoo – AFP, 25 August 2019

Tariq Ramadan is a married father of four whose grandfather founded Egypt's
Muslim Brotherhood

Tariq Ramadan, a leading Islamic scholar charged in France with raping two women, has also been accused of taking part in the gang rape of a journalist, French judicial sources said Sunday.

The sources confirmed reports on Europe 1 radio and in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper that a woman in her 50s had accused Ramadan, 56, of raping her along with a member of his staff when she went to interview the academic at a hotel in Lyon in May 2014.

The woman, who filed a criminal complaint in May 2019, also accused Ramadan of issuing "threats or acts of intimidation" aimed at dissuading her from reporting the alleged attack to the police, the judicial sources added.

Ramadan, a married father of four whose grandfather founded Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, was a professor at Oxford University until he was forced to take leave when rape allegations surfaced at the height of the "Me Too" movement in late 2017.

He has denied charges he raped a disabled woman in 2009 and a feminist activist in 2012.

He was taken into custody in February 2018 and held for nine months before being granted bail.

Authorities in Switzerland are also investigating him after receiving a rape complaint in that country.

His lawyer, Emmanuel Marsigny, refused to comment Sunday on the latest allegations against him in France.

The woman behind the latest complaint told police that Ramadan and a male assistant repeatedly raped her in Ramadan's room at the Sofitel hotel in Lyon.

She described the alleged attack as being of "untold violence" and claimed that when she threatened to report them to the police Ramadan replied: "You don't know how powerful I am."

She also claimed that Ramadan had contacted her via the Messenger app in January, two months after his release from jail, saying that he wanted to make her an "offer" of a "professional nature", without giving details.

Tariq Ramadan is a married father of four whose grandfather founded Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.