#MeToo setback: French court finds assault accuser guilty of defamation

RAEL’S COMMENT:

All men defamed online should prosecute in court those who spread wrong accusations and ask for huge damages. That would make false accusers looking for fame think twice. Internet must not become a parallel justice. Real Justice needs a court, lawyers, and fact-finding police and experts. Otherwise, it’s just public lynching.

French author Ariane Fornia has been found guilty of defamation, after a former government minister challenged her claim of sexual assault. The verdict is another blow for the #MeToo movement in France.

A Paris court ordered Fornia, the daughter of former minister Eric Besson, to pay a symbolic one euro in damages and 3,000 euros in legal fees to Pierre Joxe, a former socialist minister who Fornia defamed with an allegation of sexual assault.

In 2017, Fornia accused Joxe – now 85 – of sexually assaulting her during an opera performance in Paris seven years earlier. She did not make an official complaint, but wrote about the encounter in a blog post, describing how “He slides his hand inside my thigh, goes up to my crotch…I utter a cry of muffled indignation. Ten minutes later, he starts again.”

https://www.rt.com/news/478922-metoo-guilty-defamation-france/?fbclid=IwAR27SISRabkJwSwJp5IdB1o6BRjHky3ykrjmIQTw-PgW0oDndGLKhdjhx-Q