MORANDINI. The host was also sentenced to compulsory psychological care and three years of ineligibility for sexual harassment, when his production company was fined 10,000 euros for concealed work.
[Updated August 29, 2023 at 2:22 p.m.] Jean-Marc Morandini was given a 6-month suspended prison sentence for sexual harassment and concealed judicial work, we learned on Tuesday, August 29, 2023. The Paris court also condemned him to an obligation of psychological care and three years of ineligibility, when his production company was fined 10,000 euros. This verdict is in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution, formulated last June. The 57-year-old host’s lawyers have announced to AFP their intention to appeal.
This conviction comes in the context of dubious casting organized in 2015 as part of the web series Les Faucons. In July 2016, an article by Inrocks revealed that Jean-Marc Morandini is accused of having taken advantage of castings to demand that young actors strip naked or masturbate. “It was to see their limit,” he said last June during the trial. An investigation was opened in 2016, but was dismissed in 2018 due to “insufficiently characterized offenses”. The sexual harassment investigation was relaunched following new complaints in the summer of the same year. During the investigation, the police discovered that the host was hiding under the identity of a fake casting director named Catherine Leclerc, asking by email for videos of the naked comedians masturbating, or asking if they were ready to perform oral sex on Morandini.
On December 5, 2022, Jean-Marc Morandini was convicted of corruption of minors. The presenter appealed, so he is still presumed innocent. During the first judgment, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced the C News host to one year in prison, suspended probation of 2 years with obligation of care, a sentence consistent with that requested by the prosecutor. In detail, the host was found guilty of having exchanged sexual messages with two teenagers, and of having pushed a third to undress as part of a casting. Jean-Marc Morandini was tried on October 24, 2022 for “corruption of minors” before the 15th chamber of the Paris court. During the trial, Jean-Marc Morandini had denied en bloc, citing “clumsiness” or attempts at “humor” to justify his messages. The host of CNews, also targeted in another case – that of the castings of the web series Les Faucons -, has long tried to escape this appearance, provoked by two complaints filed in August and September 2016, by two young men who were minors at the time.
On the merits, Jean-Marc Morandini was accused of having made sexual proposals to these two complainants and to a third minor, when they were respectively 15 and 16 years old in 2009 and 2013, by digital means, but also during an encounter presented as a casting. If one of the plaintiffs has since withdrawn his application as a civil party, the prosecution has continued its proceedings against the journalist, which will feed this trial in very raw detail. And the content of the accusation will have destabilized the star of Morandini Live several times who, if she denied any form of corruption of a minor at the helm, regretted “stupid” games of seduction and recognized that these had sometimes been able flatter his ego.
