BOURDIN. The investigation targeting Jean-Jacques Bourdin, accused of sexual assault, was dismissed on April 7, 2022 for prescription.
[Mis à jour le 8 avril 2022 à 16h11] Since January 2022, Jean-Jacques Bourdin has been in turmoil, accused of sexual assault by Fanny Agostini. The facts date back to 2013. This Thursday, April 7, 2022, the investigation was closed without further action, revealed his lawyer, Me Christian Saint-Palais, to AFP. The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed with Le Parisien that the investigation was closed for “prescription of public action”.
Jean-Jacques Bourdin recalls in the press release sent by his lawyer following the dismissal of the investigation that he has “always firmly contested the facts which [lui] were accused”. “I denounce the public instrumentalization of this procedure and deplore the serious attacks that have been made on my personal life and my professional life.” For her part, Fanny Agostini’s lawyer, Me Laure Heinich, ” is not surprised” by the closing of the case, “since the complaint was effectively prescribed”.
Born in 1949 in Colombes, near Paris, Jean-Jacques Bourdin is a TV presenter and a radio presenter. He made a habit of heckling his political guests somewhat in his morning broadcast on RMC and BFM TV. From the heart of the Cévennes, Jean-Jacques Bourdin had a happy encounter in 1976: that of Raymond Castans, then Secretary General of RTL programs. Aware of the talents of the young Jean-Jacques Bourdin in sports, he brought him into the radio station as a trainee. From a sports journalist, Jean-Jacques Bourdin became a reporter then a newspaper presenter. He thus climbed the ladder until obtaining the post of editor-in-chief in 1991. From 1996 to 2000, he hosted a program of a new kind, “Les auditioneurs ont la parole”.
Called in 2001 by Alain Weill, new president of RMC radio, Jean-Jacques Bourdin took over the keys to the “Bourdin & Co” morning show in 2004. Monday to Friday, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., the host comments on political news and economical. He makes it a point of honor to engage listeners and titillate his guests with trick questions. This will be his trademark. From 2007 to 2020, his “Bourdin Direct” interview was broadcast simultaneously on BFM TV. In 2010, he tried his hand at a new program on scammers, “Abuse of trust” (TF1), but the success was not there. The same year, he received the Philippe Caloni prize for the best interviewer. Since the start of the 2020 school year, he has only presented the political interview at 8:35 a.m., on RMC and BFM TV.
On June 30, 2020, Jean-Jacques Bourdin announced that he will no longer present RMC’s morning show in response to a question from a listener. The news was later confirmed by press release by BFMTV, RMC and RMC Découverte. The approach of the presidential election and its desire to cover the event with political interviews justify this choice. Since the start of the 2020 school year, the journalist has only devoted himself to the political program “Bourdin Direct”, on BFM TV and RMC at 8:35 a.m., but also to the political program France in the eyes.
It was during the Bourdin Direct program that Jean-Jacques Bourdin met his future companion, Anne Nivat, a great written press reporter, with whom he had a son in 2006. Previously, Jean-Jacques Bourdin was married to Marie -Laure Bourdin, with whom he had two daughters.
Jean-Jacques Bourdin has been accused, since January 2022, of attempted sexual assault by a former colleague from BFM TV and RMC. We will learn in February 2022, a month later, that the complainant is the journalist Fanny Agostini. According to The Parisian, the complainant claims that the 72-year-old journalist “grabbed her by the neck and tried to kiss her several times” while she was in a swimming pool during a trip to Corsica in 2013. At the time of the events, she was 25 years old. The BFM journalist and RMC would then have sent her for several months insistent emails and SMS, which the complainant would have kept. Fanny Agostini filed a complaint against Bourdin. On January 18, 2022, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that it was opening an investigation against the journalist and analyzing the file. It was dismissed on April 7, 2022.
Jean-Jacques Bourdin has firmly denied the accusations made against him. However, he confirmed having bathed with the journalist who accuses him during this trip on the sidelines of the second Calvi Petanque Open in 2013, but denies having tried to kiss her. However, the facts of which Jean-Jacques Bourdin is accused are probably prescribed, since for this type of charge, on an adult, the prescription is six years. The Altice Media group, which owns RMC and BFM-TV, announced on January 16, 2022 that it had also opened an internal investigation “to ensure that no facts of this type have been brought to the attention of managers or colleagues. interested parties.”
A second complaint against Jean-Jacques Bourdin
The Parisian reveals on February 17, 2022 that Jean-Jacques Bourdin is the subject of a second complaint. Filed on February 16, 2022, this complaint accuses the star presenter of BMFTV-RMC of “sexual assault”, “harassment” and “sexual exhibition” for facts which allegedly occurred 36 years ago. While working as a switchboard operator in a communications company in Neuilly-Plaisance in 1988, the one Le Parisien calls Marie (the name was changed at her request) met Jean-Jacques Bourdin. According to her account, she then received daily calls for almost two weeks. The journalist would then have offered to visit, in his company, the premises of RTL.
By car, “he parked in a small street […] looked at me in a very intense way and everything happened quickly. He opened the fly of his pants and revealed his penis erect. He was like going into a trance. He had a new face, a double face. He said to me: I know that you also want it.” Jean-Jacques Bourdin would then have proposed to the young woman to be paid for sexual favors. “He told me that he loved doing that in paying […] He asked me to play the p***, the sal***.” In the columns of Le Parisien, we learn that the complainant remembers having heard the journalist tell her “that if I did what he wanted he there would be others, checks.” It was then that Jean-Jacques Bourdin allegedly tried to kiss her. “He grabbed my left hand with his right hand and directed it towards his still erect penis. “The complainant would then have managed to escape from the vehicle. In her complaint filed in Paris, Marie explains that she had experienced other outrages of this kind at her workplace. “After the appointments, he went to the toilets which were in front of the standard […] He jammed the door with his foot and masturbated while looking at me. I pretended not to see him.” The complainant, for her part, would never have alerted her superiors for fear of being fired.
Jean-Jacques Bourdin removed “temporarily” from the antenna
Accused of attempted sexual assault by a former colleague, Jean-Jacques Bourdin was “temporarily” deprived of the air by the management of BFMTV / RMC. Without any new information having been communicated, the decision was taken “so as not to prejudice the daily operation of BFMTV and RMC”, indicated the management in a press release dated January 23. “Jean-Jacques Bourdin vigorously contests the facts denounced and benefits from the presumption of innocence”, affirmed the group before adding that an internal investigation “has been opened to ensure that no fact of this type has been brought to the attention of the company’s employees and managers”. After being removed “temporarily” from the antenna by the BFMTV / RMC group, Jean-Jacques Bourdin reacted on Sunday January 23, 2022. “I regret the unilateral decision of the BFMTV and RMC group to withdraw me from the antennas to prevent risks of instrumentalization of the complaint of which I am the subject”, indicated the journalist in a press release sent to AFP on Sunday by his lawyer, deploring “that the principle of the presumption of innocence is ignored”.
New testimonials published
Médiapart also published a survey on Jean-Jacques Bourdin on February 14, 2022. The media, which inquired with around twenty employees or ex-employees of RMC and BFMTV for several weeks , portrays a man ‘respected and feared’ both ‘capable of the bloodiest rants, but described by many as ‘respectful’ of the women he works alongside, despite a well-established reputation for ‘ seducer'”. Some testimonies also reveal “a less avowable part” of Jean-Jacques Bourdin. We discover in particular a powerful personality within the editorial staff of RMC-BFMTV, who does not hesitate to distribute the good or bad points, sometimes violently, to his young collaborators.
The Mediapart survey also reports numerous references to sexual connotations in the open space. Others evoke a “repeated” and “heavy” flirt with a presenter of the weather report in Monaco. “Several times, Jean-Jacques asked her when they were going to have dinner together, when they were going to meet after work, slipped her little papers… She might say no, no, no, he came back to the charge, assures the journalist. It was repeated and insistent, it made me feel uncomfortable.” A former intern at RTL at the end of the 1990s recalls a conversation with Jean-Jacques Bourdin who had personally invited her to have a coffee at the Café de Flore. The presenter would then have told him that he was “author of erotic stories” and that she “inspired him[t] a lot and that it would be nice if [elle] could[t] accompany him to the places of his stories. It shocked me. I understood that I had been tricked, that he did not want to help me at all. I felt cheated, humiliated.”
Sidonie Bonnec speaks out
Sidonie Bonnec also explains to Mediapart an experience she had with Jean-Jacques Bourdin in 2010 after meeting him on a Direct 8 set. He offered to discuss it over lunch. “I’m not suspicious,” she says, then working at W9. Bourdin offers him to hold a press review in his morning on RMC. Several lunches and dinners later, which allow the journalist to refine her preparatory work for the start of the school year, Jean-Jacques Bourdin announces to her “that it would be very important […] that I am expanding my network a little”. He offers to accompany her the following weekend to a festival in Calvi, “it will be an opportunity for me to meet people in the trade”. However, two days before leaving, Sidonie Bonnec learns that the hotel where she is to stay is full. “But he said to me: ‘You are lucky, we have a villa with a friend, we invite you.'”, to which he would then added “there is a swimming pool, don’t forget your bathing suit.”
It was then that Sidonie Bonnec would have been greatly surprised. “That sentence cut my legs off. Suddenly it wasn’t professional at all anymore. I couldn’t see my future boss telling me ‘Take your bathing suit’. I thought to myself that we had a huge problem. ” Unable to have her plane tickets reimbursed, Sidonie Bonnec would have gone to Calvi with her companion for the weekend. Seeing them, Jean-Jacques Bourdin would have been “not at all comfortable”, she specifies in the columns of Mediapart, and would have simply greeted them “from afar”. And Sidonie Bonnec to conclude: “After that, I never heard from anyone again. Obviously, I never got the job.”
Anne Nivat has been Jean-Jacques Bourdin’s companion for several years. She was questioned about the accusations against her husband in the program “L’Instant M” on France Inter on January 17, 2022: “How do you want me to react? Jean-Jacques and I talked a lot about all that .These are intimate discussions so I would not reveal their content to anyone publicly to fuel the media buzz.” The wife of the RMC-BFM TV journalist refused to answer any further questions about him.