Treat his colleagues in “Bitch”, “Bacalao” or force a subordinate to make the pear in the skirt: Tommy François, former vice president of the Ubisoft editorial service, invoked Monday “Ubi Culture” and apologized in Helm, recognizing that “it is not normal.”
This week, the Bobigny Criminal Court judges three former executives of the video game company, accused of having led and encouraged a systemic sexual and moral harassment during the 2010.
“It was the atmosphere, the UBI culture”
“I did not think about that, it was the atmosphere, the Ubi culture: I did not ask me the question,” I nervously repeated Thomas Dit “Tommy” François to the magistrates who interrogated him in the long time after having collected the overwhelming testimonies of several complaints.
“When he arrived at my office, he was afraid,” recalls an employee who states that the forties had taken him “like his Beast Faire.”
She remembers how fun words of gravel were daily in the open space where men were largely in most. Several humiliating acts also marked the young woman.
The first time Tommy François ordered him to do the pear tree in public, he runs, “since it was my hierarchical superior,” he said in court.
While demanding that the installation renew regularly during the weeks, knowingly chooses one day to use a tight skirt. A “avoidance strategy”, in his words, who will not have stopped Tommy François.
An employee tied with a chair
When she started in the study, the twenty -seventh -year -old employee is tied with a chair and sent to the elevator on the upper floor, a “novatada” directed by the vice president who enjoyed an “aura and a high hierarchical position,” the court recalled.
Another joke that wants to be a snack: it was publicly asked that the nails and hands of Tommy François, who managed to challenge “to get rid of what imposed me as quickly as possible,” he testifies to the plaintiff.
Before her, a former executive assistant from Ubisoft told court that “he spent three years trying to round the corners in a universe or insults, screams and access to violence were daily.”
In response to these accusing statements, Tommy François quickly expressed regrets.
“I was happy to have fun with my colleagues,” recalls the defendant, taking the sleeves of his white shirt to the elbows, which he had “at that time the impression of being with respect to people.”
Before the Court, repeat the envy of not having been “the instigator of this Geek culture (…): When I arrived at Ubisoft, I found an atmosphere.”
His leitmoiv at that time: “You have to be fun to have fun.”
An almost emotional harassment “
When the president asks him about his incessant insults and his sexist comments, Tommy François replies that “it was part of the Ubisoft vocabulary.”
He says this harassment “was not to degrade, it was almost emotional.”
A decade has passed since the events that have been discussed in the Court and confessed on Monday that this “normality at that time” was not “not acceptable.”
He who hit “lacked decline” in his toxic management mode, the responsibility of which he never formed, also underlines “without having been summoned by Rr. HH.”, Located “five meters from my office.”
At the end of the two years of investigation into this file, the prosecutor decided to continue the Ubisoft company or its human resources managers, to disgust civil parties and defense.
On Tuesday, the court will question Serge Hascoët, former number 2 of the group as creative director, accused of sexual and moral harassment as complicated in the acts of his former protected Tommy François.
Source: BFM TV
