French journalist living in New York, Sandra Muller was sentenced Wednesday, September 25, 20,000 euros in damages and legal fees by the Paris court for defaming the man she accused of sexual harassment on twitter. She plans to appeal.
At the origin of the #BalanceTonPorc movement, his tweet of October 2017 ("You have big breasts. You are my type of woman. I'll make you cum all night. Éric Brion, former boss of Équidia. #balancetonporc), must also be deleted from his account. The judgment also provides for the obligation to post a tweet about the conviction on the account of Sandra Muller, as well as a publication in two journals of Eric Brion's choice.
Posted in full Weinstein case in the United States, the tweet had resulted in an unprecedented release of women victims of sexual harassment. It had earned the journalist, who heads the Letter from the Audiovisual from New York, to be named in 2017 among the magazine's personalities of the year Time.
Two months later, Éric Brion published a column in the newspaper The world to express his regrets at what he called "about displaced"And recalled that he was not Sandra Muller's supervisor at the material time. In 2018, he attacked her for defamation. During the trial, his lawyers painted a portrait of a broken man, whose health, privacy and business were affected by this episode.
"Whatever may have been the subjective feeling of Sandra Muller following the words of Eric Brion (…), the factual basis she had was insufficient to make the contentious remarks publicly accusing the plaintiff of a fact as serious as that the offense of sexual harassment, ruled the magistrates in their judgment, that procured Le Figaro. And she was cautious in her tweet, including using virulent terms such as "pork" to qualify the plaintiff, likening him in this context to Harvey Weinstein, and "balance", indicating that he must be denounced and in naming him, even specifying his former functions, thus exposing him to social reprobation".
