Paris, November 26, 2020. Gérarld Darmanin has been the target of a “rape” complaint since 2017. -

THOMAS COEX / AFP

  • In 2017, Sophie Spatz filed a complaint for “rape” against Gérald Darmanin.

    She assures that in 2009, the current Minister of the Interior would have exerted a "psychological constraint" on her in order to obtain her sexual favors.

  • Struck with two classifications without follow-up from the prosecution and then by a dismissal of an investigating judge, his complaint was relaunched in June 2020 by the Paris Court of Appeal, which called for “additional investigations”.

  • Gérald Darmanin was heard by the two investigating judges on December 14.

    He suggested that the complainant had filed a complaint for political revenge after her rallying to Emmanuel Macron, in 2017.

It was the end of the hearing ... The final questions after hours spent on the details, sometimes very intimate, of this evening of 2009. The two judges, Mylène Huguet and Dimitri Dureux, then ask Gérald Darmanin to take "some recoil ”.

Accused of "rape", the Minister of the Interior immediately complies with the exercise.

“I shouldn't have met her,” he says first.

Before bringing the subject back to the political field.

“I think there is a link between the filing of the complaint and my appointment to the government of Emmanuel Macron, in May 2017. [Sophie Spatz] had campaigned for François Fillon until the end and I am sure that she was angry with me for joining the president's team… ”

Asked on December 14 on the accusations of "rape" to which he is the subject, Gérald Darmanin therefore suggested that he was the target of a form of political revenge because of his passage from the Republicans to La République en Marche, according to his minutes of the hearing that

20 Minutes

was able to consult.

“She wrote to everyone.

Even to Jean Sarkozy!

"

It is true that it is in the premises of the UMP that this whole story began.

It was in 2009. At the time, Sophie Spatz went to the headquarters of the party she was a member of to get help.

Former escort girl, she was sentenced in her absence for harassing her ex-boyfriend.

She wants to demand a review of her trial but does not know how to go about it.

“It might sound laughable today.

But she wrote to everyone.

Even to Jean Sarkozy!

», Recalls Élodie Tuaillon-Hibon, her lawyer.

That day, the young woman, then aged 37, found herself in Gérald Darmanin's office.

He is 26 years old.

He is legal affairs advisor to Xavier Bertrand.

This is his first post.

In her complaint, Sophie Spatz ensures that he then promises to help her.

To intervene with the Ministry of Justice.

And, still according to the story of the young woman, it is appropriate, a few days later, to have a dinner with her which continues in a libertine club, then in a hotel where they have a sexual relationship.

“That evening, he said to me: 'You will have to help me too…' I understood that I had no choice.

He had my life in his hands… ”she says today.

“At 26, when you experience this kind of scene, you remember it.

"

Gérald Darmanin does not dispute having had a sexual relationship with Sophie Spatz that evening.

But he assures us that it was not he who initiated it.

In front of the judges, he explains that it was she who took matters in hand, evoking "a moment of embarrassment and excitement".

And to add: “At 26, when you experience this kind of scene, you remember it.

"

However, during the same audition, he admits unvarnished that it is not the first time that he went to a swingers club.

And do not shy away when it comes to giving details on the layout of the premises or on the dress required at the entrance.

In the establishment, he says, they spend time at the bar.

And it is Sophie Spatz who regulates the consumption.

“Being engaged and having a joint account with my fiancée, I could not see myself paying by check or credit card in a swinger club.

"

Towards a confrontation in the coming weeks

“I found her pretty,” Gérald Darmanin confides to the magistrates.

But, according to his version, it was mainly to talk about politics that he had wished to see it again after having verified that it was indeed a member and even a donor.

“My relationship with her was a relationship of activists.

"" We talked about politics.

"" I remember seeing her in a big meeting organized at the National Assembly.

Several times, he alludes to their common center of interest to explain their meeting.

And this is, according to him, the reason why she did not file a complaint before 2017. At the exact moment when he finds himself bombed in the first government of Édouard Philippe, under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

"I think she did not want me to be a minister because in her eyes, I had betrayed my political family ..." he says.

It now remains for the two judges to choose between the thesis featuring a newbie in politics abusing his power and that of a betrayed activist who decides to take revenge.

To see more clearly, they should, according to our information, organize a confrontation in the coming weeks.

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