Woman behind France’s #MeToo movement forced to pay thousands after losing defamation case

Sandra Muller also directed to post statements on her Twitter and in two media publications

Sandra Muller is a New York-based French journalist who came up with the widely circulated #balancetonporc hashtag which means rat on your pig (Getty Images)

The woman who spearheaded the #metoo movement in France has been ordered to fork out thousands of pounds to a French television executive after losing a landmark defamation case.

Sandra Muller, a New York-based French journalist who came up with the widely circulated #balancetonporc hashtag which means rat on your pig, accused French TV executive Eric Brion of making sexually explicit comments to her at a work party in the resort town of Cannes.

While her tweet was sent in October 2017 in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal, it was referring to an incident that happened half a decade earlier.

“You have big breasts. You are my type of woman. I will make you orgasm all night,” Ms Muller’s tweet quoted Brion as saying.

A Paris court has now ordered Ms Muller to pay £17,500 in damages and fees to Brion – as well as being instructed to delete the tweet which identified him.

The journalist, who has said she will appeal the verdict, has also been directed to share statements on her Twitter and in two media publications.

Ms Muller said she was “disappointed” after the decision was announced but called for women to carry on “fighting”.

She told a news conference: “It’s a proceeding that’s intended to silence the victims. The message is clear: ‘Be quiet.”’

Brion, ex head of TV channel Equidia, applauded the verdict on Twitter as a “victory of true justice” after “two years of rare violence”.

Ms Muller called for other women to come forward with their own experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace when she created the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc – with one social media tracking site estimating the hashtag had appeared on almost one million tweets a year after she came up with it.

“#balancetonporc! You too can recount by giving the name and details of a sexual harassment you have known in your job,” she tweeted back in October 2017.

Brion has admitted to flirting with Ms Muller in an inappropriate manner in a one-off incident but claims her tweet paints him as a “sexual predator” – arguing this depiction has wrecked his working life.

At a hearing in May, his lawyer Marie Burguburu told the court: “He said that one evening he tried to flirt with Sandra Muller as he liked her”.

She added: “This is his right to flirt”.

Mr Brion told the court he had said sorry to Ms Muller the next day via text message.

“#balancetonporc has allowed victims to make their voices heard and shed light on a real societal problem that remains taboo,” Ms Muller said in a Facebook post in January 2018.

A report by France’s High Council for Gender Equality published in January, which was was the major first investigation into sexism to be carried out in France, found more than a million French women were forced to endure sexist insults in 2017 with only four convictions for breaches of sexual harassment laws.

Last year politicians in France, where there has been a significant backlash to the #balancetonporc movement, approved legislation which brought in fines of up to €750 for wolf-whistling or sexual harassment on the street.

Additional reporting by Associated Press