Placed in police custody this Tuesday, December 12 after a complaint of rape, the writer and director Frédéric Beigbeder saw numerous serious statements and accusations resurface about him. Particularly because of his anti-feminist positions in connection with the PPDA affair.
This Tuesday, December 12, 2023, Frédéric Beigbeder was placed in police custody as part of a preliminary investigation for rape carried out by the Pau public prosecutor’s office (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). A complaint was filed this summer by a young woman, claiming to have suffered non-consensual sexual relations with the writer in a hotel room.
These allegations against him have quite naturally brought to light some of his comments regarding his opinions on various rape accusations. And in particular those held on Monday April 3, at the microphone of France Inter in Sonia Devilliers’ show The M moment. At the time, Frédéric Beigbeder came to talk about his new essay, Confessions of a slightly overwhelmed heterosexual. “I wrote another book that denounces gender-based violence in the modeling industry. I wrote a book that talks about Russian oligarchs who have underage girls taken away to rape them. Why didn’t I no anti-sexist fighter medal?” he declared that day.
Sexist comments linked to the PPDA affair
The writer and director had also notably been implicated in a testimony from Bénédicte Martin, alleged victim of Patrick Poivre d’Arvor. The latter indicated a few months ago on social networks that she had been forcefully kissed by PPDA and had told the writer. Frédéric Beigbeder would have responded, according to his statements: “It’s normal, you’re a girl” accompanied by a pronounced laugh.
But that’s not all. The writer does not seem to be at his first attempt in terms of delicate statements on the issue. From 1995, in the show Paris Last in 1995 with the writer Gabriel Matzneff (targeted for an investigation into rape of a minor), Frédéric Beigbeder appeared relatively relaxed, speaking in a joking tone about sexual relations “with a twelve and a half year old girl”.
Since then, reactions about the writer and his outings on feminists have multiplied. Bénédicte Martin indicates in particular that in 2003, the writer threw money notes at her “on the table of a café so that she would agree to kiss him”. All in a frank laugh. For Cécile Delarue, who also testified against PPDA for sexual harassment, Frédéric Beigbeder is “involved in the two biggest scandals of sexual violence in the literary world, Matzneff and PPDA, and still allows himself to ridicule the fight of women to be heard and respected. She even speaks of a real “disgust”. For his part, Frédéric Begbeider says he has “no memory of the 2003 conversation that Bénédicte Martin relates”. And added: “I’m sorry if I didn’t react in 2003 as I would today. I was very stupid at that time but we all already knew that.”