liable to five years’ imprisonment, the facts alleged against the animator of CNews, which he disputes, date back to 2009 and 2013.
Le Monde
After years of procedure, the television host Jean-Marc Morandini, 57, is tried on Monday October 24 in Paris for having asked the sexual favors of two teenagers, by SMS for one and via a casting for the second.
liable to five years’ imprisonment, the accusation of “corruption of minors” relates to facts which date back to 2009 and 2013 and which are disputed by the one who animates on CNews a daily dedicated to the media after having animated, Among other things, the programs “crimes” on NRJ 12 or “presumed innocent” on direct 8.
“We have the impression that we want at all costs that Mr. Morandini is tried”, denounces to the agency France-Presse one of his lawyers, Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, who affirms that his client “was” the victim of a terrible media lynching “throughout these six years of education.
complaint of two adolescents
The case started from the complaint of two adolescents aged 15 and 16, filed in 2016 when the inrockuptibles revealed how Jean-Marc Morandini, posing as the casting director of an erotic web series, would have pushed young actors, adults, to show off naked.
This dossier is worth the animator to be returned as a correctional for “sexual harassment” on one of these actors. The date of this second trial is not yet known.
With regard to the “corruption of minors” component, the first complaint came from a teenager to whom Mr. Morandini would have made sexual proposals in electronic discussions, between February and March 2013, when the host was In charge of the program “You are live” on NRJ 12. Faced with investigators in 2016, the complainant had mentioned conversations having “slipped” towards his sexual orientation and masturbation. “Because he was extremely publicized and popular, I ended up getting into his game,” he said, according to elements reported then by 20 minutes .
The second complainant, who has since desisted, had said that he was contacted in July 2009 by the production company of Mr. Morandini, via a casting site, for a remake project of Ken Park, an American film Staging very raw sex between adolescents. For the needs of the casting, he had declared that he went to Mr. Morandini’s home, having undressed before him and having refused to masturbate as asked for the animator.
custody
Placed in police custody in 2016, Mr. Morandini defended himself by ensuring that he was not informed of the age of the first complainant and that he had ceased all relationships with the second since He had learned that he was under 18 years old.
Civil party at the trial, the association Agir against prostitution of children says it wait for an “exemplary” criminal response. “Young people are particularly exposed when it comes to attractive professions such as castings, in which they are in a position of weakness,” said Bérengère Wallaert, his general delegate, cited in a press release.
At the end of 2016, this case had caused a crisis open to I-Télé, the ancestor of Cnews, whose businessman Vincent Bolloré had taken control a year earlier. For a month, the editorial staff had started to protest against the arrival on the antenna of Mr. Morandini, who had just been indicted for “corruption of minors”. The movement had ended in the departure of nearly a third of the journalists from the news channel.
In a platform then addressed to the strikers, Mr. Morandini then asked them to “let work”. “What does the presumption of innocence mean, which everyone considers to respect, if I cannot exercise my profession before the end of a criminal procedure which can be long?”, He wrote.