Fabien Galthié, the France head coach, is to sue a glossy magazine over photographs of him naked on a beach published after his team’s elimination from the Rugby World Cup.
Voici, a weekly publication specialising in celebrity news, published a series of photographs of Galthié and Héléna Noguerra, his partner, a Belgian singer, undressed on a pebble beach in Dieppe in northern France in its latest edition, which came out on Friday.
The magazine said the photographs were taken a few days after France were beaten 29-28 by South Africa in the World Cup quarter-final in Paris. The result put paid to French hopes of winning the World Cup for the first time on home soil, as the country’s football team did in 1998.
Voici showed Galthié, 54, and Noguerra, also 54, walking through Dieppe before stripping off to have a dip in the Channel in front of what the magazine described as surprised passers-by.
In a statement, Galthié, who will be staying on as France’s head coach despite the World Cup exit, said he and Noguerra would sue Voici under the country’s privacy laws.
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He said his lawyers had been informed of Voici’s plan to publish the photographs taken “without our consent” and asked the magazine not to do so.
“We feel this attack on our privacy to be a violation of the fundamental respect to which each person has the right. Our lawyers will take all the necessary steps to protect our rights and to defend our private lives.”
Marion Alombert, Voici’s editor, outlined what is likely to be the magazine’s defence, saying: “These photos were taken on a public beach where [Galthié and Noguerra] were not alone. [It was] a spontaneous moment of relaxation that we chose to show.
“The article is absolutely not negative or degrading, quite the opposite. They are a very beautiful couple [and] very much in love.”
France has tight privacy laws, but judges tend to award low-level damages for breaches, at least by comparison with payouts in court cases in the UK and the United States. Julie Gayet, the partner of François Hollande, the former president, received €1,500 (about £1,300) when Voici published photographs of them together in 2015, for instance.
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In 2020, Closer, another glossy magazine, was ordered to pay damages of €8,000 to Brigitte Macron, the first lady, after reporting that she had undergone cosmetic surgery the previous year.
Lawyers say celebrity magazines often choose to run articles that flagrantly breach privacy laws because the benefits in terms of increased sales outweigh the damages they could pay.
French law prohibits going naked on beaches unless they are classified as nudist. The offence carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a fine of €15,000. Guide-maturiste.fr, the French nudist website, says the practice is accepted on the beach in Dieppe.
