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Rabat – Four young Moroccan women have come forward with sexual harrassment claims against French businessman Jacques Bouthier, with an announcement on Friday on court cases being built against him.
The women, whose ages range from 26 to 28 years old, invited other victims to break the long-standing cycle of silence and expose aggressors, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Three women attended a press conference with activists from the Moroccan Association for the Rights of Victims, where they announced that they would be bringing Bouthier to court for human trafficking, sexual harrassment, and verbal abuse.
Bouthier, according to the victims who appeared in the conference under pseudonyms and with face masks and sunglasses, fired them after they resisted his sexual harrassment and blackmail, in incidents that happened between 2018 and 2022.
“I worked up the courage to talk today because I want to give a lesson to all harassers,” one of the victims said during the conference. “But also to send a message of hope to all victims of sexual harrassment.”
“It’s time for us all to wake up and stop normalizing workplace harassment,” she added.
Another victim said Bouthier inappropriately touched her during work, causing her “a great shock.”
The complaints, which have been sent to Tangier’s Attorney General, also implicate other French and Moroccan executives, who allegedly presented their victims with monetary rewards for sex and threatened them with firing as well as with death threats.
Guellaa Aicha, the association’s president said that they possess all the evidence necessary to prove Bouthier’s guilt and that of the other executives, adding that more victims want to break their silence.
Bouthier is currently incarcerated in France under charges of kidnapping and raping a minor, after a preliminary investigation that ended in May found him guilty, alongside four others, of sexual misconduct.
Despite harsh punishments in the law for perpetrators of sexual harrassment, women still face big social barriers when coming out with stories about their abusers.
Many are ostracized in the workplace and find it difficult to find new jobs in what activists describe as a male-dominated and patriarchal system, causing many women to instead choose not to come out with their stories of abuse.
Read also: Oujda-Based Association Raises Awareness on Sexual Harassment, Violence Against Women
But with the advent of the #MeToo movement in the US and its “#BalanceTonPorc” equivalant in France, the past few years have seen a global push for victims of sexual harrassment and domestic abuse to come forward with their stories.
