“Just a hug”: navigator Kevin Escoffier, tried this Monday in Lorient for sexual assault on four women, denied any touching of his main accuser, a former press officer for his team who maintained his version at the bar.
“He grabbed my breasts, I pulled back and he grabbed them again”
According to the young 33-year-old Frenchwoman, who triggered the proceedings by filing a complaint against him, the Breton skipper took advantage of this “hug” – hug, in English – to attack her by surprise during an evening in a bar in Newport (United States), stage of the Ocean Race in May 2023.
“He grabbed my breasts, I stepped back and he grabbed them again,” she repeated before the Lorient criminal court.
According to the young woman's account, the sailor continued: "his hand went everywhere, from under my breasts to my buttocks (...) I didn't ask for anything though", she recounts at the helm, in an emotional voice but standing straight. “The only time there is contact between her breasts and me is during the hug (...) chest to chest,” assures Kevin Escoffier.
“If I had done what she describes, I would remember it, but at no time did I do it,” he protests. He had certainly drunk wine and beer that evening “but not more than the other participants”, according to him.
“I did blood tests, I have a bull’s testosterone level”
Kevin Escoffier recognizes "being a tactile person" and being able to "be intense" but he says he still cannot explain the young woman's accusations. The day after the incident, he still apologized to her “if anything went wrong”.
The judicial investigation opened after the facts denounced by the complainant was then traced to three other women who denounced similar attacks on the part of the sailor, now 46 years old. These acts were allegedly committed between the end of 2017 and April 2018, in Melbourne (Australia), Brazil and Lorient. All were present on Monday on the civil parties’ bench. Kevin Escoffier contests all accusations against him.
In response to the president's questions, the navigator denies having a problem with alcohol or having a particular relationship with sexuality as several people cited in the investigation suggest.
“I have done blood tests, I have a testosterone level of bull” which could explain that “people have difficulty supporting my intensity”, wrote the navigator to a friend, recalls the president of the court.
Kevin Escoffier's lawyer, Me Virginie Le Roy, denounced Monday at the opening of the proceedings "an investigation oriented from the start" to "make Kevin Escoffier a serial sexual assaulter", affirming that numerous certificates that she had produced in his favor were not accepted.
In this regard, she requested the nullity of the procedure.
A call from the feminist collective NousToutes
“I was in Saint-Malo for the start of the Route du rhum, and people were talking a lot about this Escoffier trial. There is a wait, including among men,” Marine, a woman present Monday morning in court, alongside around ten others, told AFP at the call of the feminist collective NousToutes which wishes to “break the silence on violence”.
This forty-year-old, who did not wish to reveal her name, says she herself was the victim of sexual assault on several occasions during her 18 years in the ocean racing world. She hopes that the trial of Kevin Escoffier will raise awareness.
Shortly after the accusations against him were publicized in June 2023, the sailor left the Holcim-PRB monohull team in the middle of the Ocean Race.
Naval engineer and member of an illustrious family of Breton sailors, Kevin Escoffier made himself known to the general public by coming close to death in November 2020 during the Vendée Globe. Shipwrecked during a storm off the Cape of Good Hope, he jumped into his life raft before being rescued at the last minute by Jean Le Cam.
