Paris (France) (AFP) – Journalist Marie Portolano was acquitted on Wednesday by the Paris judicial court of defamation proceedings brought by former star football columnist Pierre Ménès, whom she accused of sexual assault, alleged acts for which he will soon be judged.

Published on: 04/11/2026 - 18:03

“Pierre Ménès had sought to reverse the roles, by presenting himself as a victim. He failed,” said the journalist’s lawyer, Me Christophe Bigot, before the 17th criminal chamber where the judgment was rendered.

“Now, there is obviously a second round, on November 16 in Nanterre,” where Pierre Ménès must appear, added the lawyer.

Pierre Ménès took legal action three months after the publication of Marie Portolano's book, "Je suis la femme du plateau" (Stock editions), in March 2024, in which the sports journalist recounted a sexual assault suffered on the Canal+ set in 2016.

In one of the two passages concerned by the complaint, Marie Portolano recounted, without naming the columnist: "He allowed himself to do what he wanted to the women around him. To touch who he wanted, where he wanted, with the consent not of the people concerned obviously, but of those who could have easily stopped him."

On September 7, Pierre Ménès was not present at the trial, which he had requested in vain to be postponed. The general director of Stock Editions, Manuel Carcassonne, was also released.

Pierre Ménès' career was halted in 2021 after the resounding broadcast on Canal+ of the documentary "I'm not a slut, I'm a journalist", co-directed by Marie Portolano, to denounce sexism in sports journalism.

In sequences cut during editing but unearthed by the media Les Jours, Marie Portolano criticized Pierre Ménès for having raised her skirt in front of the Canal Football Club audience in 2016.

Marie Portolano did not file a complaint and deplored the "manhunt" which targeted Pierre Ménès after the revelations, believing that he was not "guilty" of "the entirety of sexism in France".

However, the Nanterre public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into these facts. The trial is scheduled for November 16.

Pierre Ménès was sentenced in 2023 in Paris to a two-month suspended prison sentence in another case of sexual assault, on a shop assistant on the Champs-Élysées. This conviction has become final.

© 2026 AFP

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