Just appointed, the new Minister of Solidarity Damien Abad is facing accusations of rape revealed by Mediapart, which he disputed, Sunday May 22, "with the greatest force".

Two women, whose testimony the newspaper collected, accuse Damien Abad, 42, of rape in 2010 and 2011. 

According to Mediapart, a report on this subject was sent to LREM and LR on May 16, then to the public prosecutor, by the Observatory of sexist and sexual violence in politics, an association created in February by feminists originally of the #MeTooPolitics movement.

These accusations were "forcefully" contested by Damien Abad, former president of the LR deputies who took office on Saturday as Minister of Solidarity, Autonomy and People with Disabilities.

"I deny having exercised any form of coercion on any woman," he wrote in a statement to AFP.

"These accusations relate to acts or gestures that are simply impossible for me because of my disability", also defends Damien Abad, suffering from arthrogryposis, a rare disease which blocks his joints and reduces his mobility.

"The sexual act can only occur with the assistance and kindness of my partner," he adds.

"Total Blackout"

"It is shocking that he remains in the government given the extremely serious facts of which he is accused", reacted the feminist activist Mathilde Viot, one of the founders of the Observatory at the origin of the reports of the complainants.

She confirmed to AFP that she had sent these reports by email to several LREM and LR officials on May 16, with a reminder on Thursday. 

In the entourage of Stanislas Guerini, boss of LREM, it is said that the email was only seen on Saturday.

LREM MP Bérangère Couillard, also the recipient, assured that she had "no trace of an email from the Observatory".

The secretary general of LR Aurélien Pradié says he has not seen him either.

The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed that it had "received a report from the Observatory on May 20", currently "under analysis".

According to the testimonies collected by Mediapart, one of the two women, aged 41, denounces facts which allegedly took place during a party in the fall of 2010.

Damien Abad would have offered him a glass of champagne in a bar in Paris.

"And there, total blackout, until the next morning", testifies this woman, who says she woke up with him "in a hotel room near the bar", "in her underwear", in "state of shock and deep disgust," according to his account.

She shares her feeling of having been "drugged". 

'No impunity'

The other woman, a 35-year-old former centrist activist, testifies to events that allegedly took place in early 2011.

After having met Damien Abad in 2009, when she was vice-president of the Young Democrats in Paris, then having been "discussed by sms", she would have found him one evening in Paris and they would have had a sexual relationship first consented then forced, imprinted with "disrespect, injunction and insistence".

According to Mediapart, she went to a police station in 2012 to testify, but then did not respond to the police.

Then she filed a complaint for "rape" in 2017 against him, and the investigation was dismissed.

The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed "that a first complaint filed for acts of rape was dismissed on April 6, 2012 due to the complainant's failure to act".

And that a "second complaint filed by the same complainant for the same facts was dismissed on December 5, 2017, after a preliminary investigation, for lack of a sufficiently serious offense".

During a trip to Normandy, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said she only discovered these accusations on Saturday.

"I can assure you that if there are new elements, if justice is again seized, we will draw all the consequences of this decision", she declared, affirming that there could be "no impunity" for sexual violence.

“We cannot pre-convict people on the basis of assertions”, estimated on France 3 Patrick Mignola, boss of the MoDem deputies.

But for Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELV, Damien Abad "should never have been named".

"There is a report that was made at an extremely high level of responsibility. They did not draw any conclusions from it before," said rebellious leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

With AFP

The summary of the

France 24 week invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you!

Download the France 24 app

google-play-badge_EN