The former Canal columnist was given a two-month suspended prison sentence by the Paris Criminal Court for sexual assault on Wednesday April 19.
[Updated April 19, 2023 at 10:09 a.m.] Pierre Ménès was sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court to a two-month suspended prison sentence for sexual assault by the Paris Criminal Court this Wednesday, April 19. He was also acquitted of two of the three complaints against him. The Paris Criminal Court thus did not follow the requisitions of the prosecution, which had requested 8 months in prison suspended and a fine of 6,000 euros.
Pierre Ménès was the subject of three complaints. Two of them concerned accusations of touching two saleswomen of a Nike store on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, facts which would have occurred on June 18, 2018. He was convicted for one of them only. He was also accused of sexual assault on a hostess at the Parc des Princes since November 20, 2021. There too, the 59-year-old sports columnist was released.
Biography of Pierre Ménès – Born June 29, 1963 in Paris, Pierre Ménès is a former French sports journalist and consultant. His favorite field is football. After beginning his career in the written press, he became known to the general public in 2006, when he worked as a journalist and columnist for M6. In 2009, he joined Canal as a consultant, appearing in particular on the show Canal Football Club, but also in Canal Champion Club or Touche pas à mon sport. During his career, he won the Micro d’Or “Influencer of the Year” (2012) and received the Lucarne d’Or award for best football consultant (2013).
After accusations of harassment and sexual assault, highlighted in the documentary “I’m not a bitch, I’m a journalist” by Marie Portolano, he left the Canal group in 2021. At the same time, he was under investigation. judicial: an investigation was opened in January 2022 for facts that allegedly occurred at Canal. He will also be tried on March 8, 2023 for “sexual assault” after a hostess at the Parc des Princes reported “inappropriate gestures”.
Although he was born in the capital, Pierre Ménès has Breton origins. Her father is an insurer, her mother an English teacher. It was in Brest, with his paternal family, that he spent his holidays. Athlete, he practices fencing but finds himself forced to stop after being the victim of an accident. He also plays tennis and football. His passion for football began during the 1975-76 season. From 1983, he worked as a freelancer for L’Equipe, from 1983 to 2005.
After beginning his career in the written press, he became an editorial writer for L’Equipe TV from 1999 to 2003. In 2005, he joined the M6 ??channel as co-host of “100% Foot”. It was during the coverage of the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2008 that he became known to the general public. He left Channel 6 in 2009 to join the Canal team. He was then a columnist on the Canal Football Club program, where he no longer acted as a journalist but as a consultant. He is also a columnist, on the encrypted channel, for the programs Les Spécimens then Les Spécialistes. After a stint on the program Touche pas à mon poste in 2017, he left the Canal group in 2021, after accusations of sexual assault by certain employees of the channel.
Since his retirement from television, Pierre Ménès has announced the creation of a website, “Pierrot le foot”, where he compiles his analyzes and conducts interviews with personalities from the world of football and beyond, such as Eric Zemmour lately (see here). The site was launched in association with Rewold Media (Closer, Grazia, Marie France, Science
“After having done so successfully for fifteen years in television, Pierre Ménès invests a new playground with the “Pierrot Football Club” […] On the program: interviews (prestigious guests, experts), reports, podcasts, analyzes , contributions from Internet users, talk shows…”, also wrote Reworld. Debates between Pierre Ménès and Internet users were also promised “for an opinion media in direct contact with its audience”. “It’s a pleasure to collaborate with the Reworld Media teams, together we are launching an ambitious, interactive and content-rich project. All without jargon and in this relaxed tone that is my signature. In a few days, football aficionados will be able to discover the PFC and get a taste for it!”, enthused Pierre Ménès.
On August 18, 2016, Pierre Ménès temporarily withdrew from Canal citing health problems. We learn that he suffers from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, misnamed “soda disease”. A few months later, in December, he received a kidney and liver transplant. For seven months, he does not appear on the air of the Canal Football Club. He returned on April 2, 2017. He recounted his experience of the disease and his operation in the biographical work Second Half, released the same year.
His lawyer, Maître Arash Derambasrh, told RMC Sport on June 8, 2022 that Pierre Ménès “is sick”. He also clarified that his client is “very tired” of this procedure and the case. “It’s going to go from bad to worse. This postponement will be detrimental to his health”. According to him, Pierre Menes was hospitalized until May and even ended up in a coma. He “could even die,” he says.
Since 2011, Pierre Ménès has been in a relationship with a certain Mélissa Acosta, who was working in the restaurant business when they met. In his book “Deuxième demi-temps”, the sports consultant talks about his relationship with his wife: “I had passed the age of fairy tales when I met Mélissa… I loved this girl who felt strongly the Caribbean, the sunny culture, the good mood”. Pierre Ménès is also the father of two children, born from a previous union.
Pierre Ménès, under investigation for “sexual assault” after a hostess at the Parc des Princes reported “inappropriate gestures” that she allegedly suffered at the end of November, according to her, after a PSG match, is tried on March 8, 2023 in the capital. Placed in police custody on December 9, 2021, the former Canal columnist finally saw it lifted in the evening. The alleged actions of Pierre Ménès vis-à-vis a hostess of the Parc des Princes had already been mentioned in several media and on social networks: the alleged facts would have occurred on November 20, 2021, on the sidelines of the PSG-Nantes match counting for the Ligue 1 championship. Pierre Ménès was accused of having touched the chest of a hostess. He was acquitted by the Paris Criminal Court on April 19, 2023.
It was the broadcast of a documentary signed by another journalist, Marie Portolano, which caused Pierre Ménès’ setbacks. Entitled “I’m not a slut, I’m a journalist” and broadcast on Canal on March 21, it gave the floor to sports journalists who said they were victims of denigration, sexual harassment or even sexual assault in a very masculine universe. Pierre Ménès was among the personalities cited, even if Marie Portolano was not specifically targeting his former colleague from the encrypted channel, as she explained in several media, including TV Mag, in mid-May.
The testimonies against Pierre Ménès were nevertheless precise in the documentary: the columnist was notably accused of having lifted the skirt of Marie Portolano and of having “grabbed her buttocks”, before being slapped by the journalist. Invited to react to this excerpt from the documentary in TPMP, March 22, 2021, Pierre Ménès will indicate “not to remember” this moment and will ensure: “lift a skirt if I had to do it again, I would do it again”. Words that he will later regret in front of the same Cyril Hanouna. “I don’t remember anymore, the facts go back to August 28, 2016, this is my last show before I got sick. I think that night I was not in my normal state”, will also indicate Pierre Ménès, who benefited from a liver and kidney transplant in December 2016 to treat a critical case of non-alcoholic cirrhosis and type II diabetes following the so-called “soda” disease.
The revelations of Marie Portolano’s documentary will cause a stir at Canal, where the journalist and Pierre Ménès were employees at the time of the events, but also in other newsrooms, in full swing
Pierre Ménès has been the subject of a new investigation since January 4, 2022. The Brigade for the repression of delinquency against persons, BRDP, is carrying out investigations following a report from the Hauts-de-Seine labor inspectorate, dating from 17 last December. In question: an internal report to Canal written during the summer, in which seven employees who worked with the sports consultant denounced acts of sexual harassment or sexual assault when he worked within the encrypted channel.
This report cites the accusations of both men and women. Among them, the journalist Isabelle Moreau, forcibly kissed by Pierre Ménès in 2011 on the set of the Canal Football Club, but also Marie Portolano. The former Canal journalist accuses Pierre Ménès of having lifted her skirt at the end of a program in 2016. The presenter today on M6 had evoked this incident in her documentary, “I am not a slut, I am journalist”. Pierre Ménès assures that he does not remember.
At 58, Pierre Ménès has become one of the most renowned (and most severe) observers of professional football over the past ten years, notably through the Canal Football Club de Canal, where he had served as a columnist since 2009. But since the beginning of 2021, the journalist has been the subject of several accusations relating to inappropriate words or gestures towards women, so much so that he was removed from the channel in two stages: at the end of March , Canal published a press release to mean that Pierre Ménès would no longer be on the air “until further notice” and that this decision had been taken by “mutual agreement”; mid-July, the columnist himself announced his final departure. On July 12, in Le Parisien, Pierre Ménès made it clear that this departure was “not a dismissal” and that he himself had “asked to leave”.
“I did not see myself coming back on the air with certain people who let me down in an ignoble way”, then explained Pierre Ménès who quoted “among others” Hervé Mathoux, the presenter of the Canal Football Club, in the columns of Télé Star: “He was there to show off when I was sick, but when he had to take out his c… there was no one left.” Nathalie Iannetta, former journalist for Canal where she met Pierre Ménès, then moved to TF1 and now director of sports for Radio France, will also be singled out. “Nathalie Iannetta wrote her pamphlet in Le Monde. She clears me without really doing it. I will never forget the phone call she gave me when I found myself in the heart of the reactor. She told me ‘resign, that’s the best thing for you to do’. That’s the thing that hurt me the most”.
A complaint for “sexual assault” was filed against Pierre Ménès in October 2018 by an employee of a Parisian Nike store. According to Médiapart, this complaint had been dismissed on January 17, 2019 after a reminder to the law by the Paris prosecutor’s office. Pierre Ménès was given a two-month suspended prison sentence on April 19, 2023 in connection with an accusation of touching a saleswoman in a Nike store on the Champs-Elysées. Also accused by a second saleswoman, he was released.
Other cases have also been unearthed in the press concerning Pierre Ménès. The newspaper Le Monde recalls that last December, the sports columnist was the subject of a judicial investigation opened in Nanterre for “moral harassment” after a complaint from his former assistant Emmanuel Trumer, who also detailed his grievances on its website. The latter accused him of “homophobia” and “racism”. A previous complaint is also mentioned which has been dismissed. The columnist for his part sued his former collaborator for defamation.