Stéphane Plaza has been heard since Tuesday morning and has been taken into police custody. Legal proceedings are being considered.
Stéphane Plaza is accused of domestic violence by two of his ex-partners. This Tuesday, the flagship host of M6 was heard on this affair. Although he was initially summoned for a free hearing, he was ultimately placed in police custody to answer the accusations. This Wednesday, after being seen by a psychologist and having passed a drug test, according to BFMTV, he was successively confronted by the two women who filed a complaint. The police custody of the presenter of “Apartment or house search” should end this Thursday.
The Paris prosecutor’s office must therefore decide in the morning on possible legal proceedings. Stéphane Plaza could simply be released without prosecution but also brought before a magistrate to possibly be released under judicial supervision with a ban on contact with the complainants. He may also be indicted if the judge considers that there are serious and consistent indications of his involvement in the alleged facts. A judicial investigation could also be opened to continue the investigation given the complexity of the case.
One of his former companions claimed that he had broken her ring finger and dislocated her middle and index fingers. For her injuries, she would have had ten days of ITT (total incapacity for work). The second complainant was, according to her, the victim of bites on several occasions outside of any intimate context. If the classification of domestic violence having resulted in more than eight days of ITT was ultimately accepted, the facilitator could be indicted and risk up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros.
Stéphane Plaza “in denial”?
The host would have defended himself by evoking the hypothesis of accidental injuries. Denying the acts of violence with which he is accused, he maintains his version according to which the two women joined forces against him to damage his reputation. He would have rejected and deceived both of them and according to him, they would seek revenge.
According to a source close to the case, cited by The Parisian, Stéphane Plaza would currently place himself in “denial” and “victimization”. He would be shot dead in police custody. He is presumed innocent in this proceeding.
The testimony of the three ex-partners published by Mediapart
Stéphane Plaza is accused by three former partners of acts of violence in an article in Mediapart published Thursday September 21. They say they suffered “verbal and psychological violence (humiliation, denigration, threats)” from the real estate agent and two of them describe “physical attacks”. They further claimed to the investigative newspaper that they had maintained a relationship with the host without knowing that he was seeing other people, accusing him of “exerting manipulation, pressure and mistreatment” to “make several relationships coexist serious at the same time.
Stéphane Plaza would have refused to respond to requests from Mediapart on these various matters. The host’s lawyer, Me Hélène Plumet, denounced “totally extrapolated, even false allegations” and “fanciful accusations”. She also announced that Stéphane Plaza had filed a complaint against them last June for harassment and cyberharassment.
Among the testimonies revealed by Mediapart against the fifty-year-old host and real estate agent, one of his ex partners, who allegedly provided written testimony to a bailiff in May 2022, accuses him of having “violently flipped” several fingers at him during a fit of fury. “Three of my fingers were hanging off, they quickly turned purple and swollen,” she assures. She also claims to have been “punched in the shoulder”. Another of his former partners, who would have filed a handrail in September 2022, claims that he would have inflicted “bites” on her. Threats are also mentioned in this Mediapart article.
Stéphane Plaza “fears for his life”
Stéphane Plaza’s lawyer assures Mediapart that these testimonies come from “three women he dated and who, finally rejected joined forces against him to harm him by all means”. His lawyer also tells Mediapart that a complaint for harassment and cyberstalking was filed against one of the accusers in June 2023: “The facts are sufficiently serious for Mr. Plaza to fear for his life, as he indicated to the district Attorney”. A prosecution was also reportedly filed against one of the accusers in October 2021.
In a press release, Stéphane Plaza’s counsel denounced “defamatory and insulting accusations”. “Mediapart acted as relay for three women who undermine the dignity” of Stéphane Plaza, “thus making themselves complicit in the public denigration against the latter, while they are the subject of a criminal complaint that he filed [contre elles] for harassment and cyberharassment”, we can still read.
The M6 group, for its part, reacted to the information late in the evening, Thursday September 21. On X (formerly Twitter), he indicated that he had an interview with Stéphane Plaza after the information appeared in the press. Saying that it was “particularly attached to the values of respect for people and guarantor of its code of ethics and professional conduct”, the M6 group announced that it was taking “note of Stéphane Plaza’s formal challenge to the facts with which he is accused and the legal challenges that ‘he committed’.