Le Figaro Bordeaux
“The investigating judge is now seized
,” declared the public prosecutor of Bordeaux, Frédérique Porterie, Tuesday evening.
Investigations are therefore relaunched in the case of accusations of “rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment” against a professor and former vice-president of Bordeaux-Montaigne University after the complaint filed by one of his colleagues, the philosopher Barbara Stiegler.
The alleged victim accuses him of having raped her in May 2020. The preliminary investigation, first closed without further action by the Bordeaux public prosecutor, led Barbara Stiegler to file a new complaint after the dean of investigating judges , on July 27, by becoming a civil party.
The case began in 2021 after Barbara Stiegler's testimony to the leadership of her department.
Notified of the facts on June 1, 2022, the university's reporting unit then received around ten former philosophy students also reporting inappropriate behavior and sexual assault on the part of this teacher.
A work of listening, the impartiality of which had been called into question by the student collective Le Poing Levé, which argued that the members of this cell are appointed by the president of Bordeaux-Montaigne University.
The targeted professor disputes the facts
The alleged attacker disputes the facts with which he is accused.
Suspended five months, then seven months in September 2022 so that an administrative investigation could be carried out, the professor finally returned to his post in November.
A decision which had provoked the ire of student unions and which was revoked last week by the disciplinary section of Toulouse Capitole University, which took over the case.
The professor targeted by these accusations has therefore been suspended from his duties for one year, with deprivation of half his salary, since February 1.
The president of the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne, Lionel Larré, has defended himself since the fall of having
"failed in his duties"
, denouncing a
"media campaign fueled by false information"
and emphasizing having
"set up measures to encourage victims to speak out
.