• On February 17, 2021, Georges Tron was sentenced on appeal to 5 years in prison, including three years, for rape and sexual assault.

  • Until Tuesday, he continued to exercise his mandate as mayor from the prison of Health.

    Having appealed, he remains in fact presumed innocent.

  • He finally announced in a statement Tuesday that he was resigning.

For three months, Georges Tron had made his cell of 9 m2, in the heart of the VIP district of the prison of Health, the annex of his office as mayor of Draveil, a town in the north of Essonne.

But after several weeks of controversy, until the highest summit of the state, the city councilor, sentenced in February to five years in prison, including three years for rape and sexual assault, finally announced his resignation.

A look back at a controversy in three acts.

Act I: Condemned, imprisoned ... but presumed innocent

It was February 17th. At the end of a legal procedure of more than ten years and a deliberation that lasted nearly eleven hours, Georges Tron, acquitted at first instance, was finally found guilty of rape and sexual assault on a former employee at the town hall. de Draveil, in Essonne. A few minutes after the announcement of the verdict, the politician, former Secretary of State to François Fillon, was taken directly to the prison of Health.

If the court matched his sentence with six years of ineligibility, the city councilor of Draveil since 1995, reelected in June 2020, quickly let it be known that he did not intend to resign.

And nothing obliges him to do so: Georges Tron having appealed to the Supreme Court, he remains, even imprisoned, presumed innocent.

During municipal councils, he is thus presented by his first deputy, Richard Privat, as simply "prevented".

If the latter replaces him on a daily basis, the shadow of the condemned hangs over the town hall: each council begins with the reading of a letter written from his cell by Georges Tron.

“I was in daily contact with my municipal team and my collaborators and I carried out all the tasks relating to my mandates,” he writes in his press release announcing his departure.

Act II: The government steps in

This atypical management of the town hall of the town arouses indignation in the opposition or among feminist associations. So much so that the subject quickly went beyond the local framework. In mid-March, PS Senator Laurence Rossignol challenges the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti… who is none other than the former lawyer of Georges Tron. “You have the power, in the Council of Ministers, to dismiss this mayor. What are you waiting for? », Asks the elected. If the minister immediately put forward the presumption of innocence, the government did an about-face a month later.

On May 12, Gabriel Attal, his spokesperson, said during a press point that "work [is] in progress to look at the conditions under which this dismissal could be done".

According to the General Code of Local Authorities, the decision to dismiss a mayor can be made by the executive.

“The mayor and the deputies […] can be suspended by reasoned ministerial decree for a period which does not exceed one month.

They can only be revoked by reasoned decree taken in the Council of Ministers ”, specifies article L2122-16.

But as the Keeper of the Seals reminded Laurence Rossignol, the presumption of innocence runs until the conviction is final.

Act III: End of the game

In his press release, the mayor of Draveil also insists that his resignation is in no way imposed.

If he withdraws, he explains, it is because a “debate is opening today on the material capacity which I would have to exercise my functions.

I do not have the means to participate ”.

What do the reasons for the opposition and the feminist associations involved in this movement matter since the result is there?

Even Marlène Schiappa, Minister for Citizenship, said on Twitter that this departure was "the least of things".

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  • Society

  • Rape

  • Georges tron

  • Justice

  • Paris