A Parisian investigating judge ordered on July 8, 2022 a dismissal in favor of the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, accused by a woman of rape since 2017, AFP learned this Monday July 11 from his lawyers Mathias Chichportich and Pierre-Olivier Sur, confirming the information from BFMTV. “For the fourth time in five years, justice affirms that no reprehensible act can be reproached to Mr. Gérald Darmanin. Two decisions of classification without follow-up then two orders of dismissal intervened under the authority of four different magistrates, including two investigating judges“, they noted.
The two councils of Gérald Darmanin specify: “Our client has always refrained from commenting on court decisions and will therefore not comment further.“The Minister filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation. This complaint”follows its course“, according to the lawyers.”You still have to measure what it’s like to be wrongly accused, to have to explain to your parents what happened because, it’s true, I had a life as a young man“, had justified the minister in July 2020 to the newspaper The voice of the North.
This decision, subject to appeal, puts a provisional end to this very politically sensitive file in which the plaintiff Sophie Patterson-Spatz accused the tenant of Beauvau of rape, sexual harassment and breach of trust, for facts which allegedly occurred at Paris in 2009. On January 12, the Paris prosecutor’s office had already taken requisitions in favor of closing the file without prosecution.
Since his appointment in the summer of 2020, and again during his recent reappointment, the presence of Gérald Darmanin in government has been the target of numerous criticisms, particularly in feminist ranks. The story began in 2009, at the headquarters of the UMP, ancestor of LR. The complainant had contacted the elected official, then in charge of the party’s legal affairs department, to obtain support when she wanted to have a 2004 conviction for blackmail and malicious calls against a ex-companion.
No reaction from the complainant for the moment
According to her, Gérald Darmanin would have dangled his support, via a letter that he undertook to write to the Chancellery, asking him in exchange for a sexual relationship. According to her account before the investigators, Sophie Patterson-Spatz had no desire for this sexual relationship, would have “panic”, but would have felt compelled to “go to the pan“, having “no choice“. A few years later, the complainant ended up analyzing these facts as rape and filed a complaint in June 2017. The investigation followed long procedural disputes before the case was resumed in the summer of 2020 by an investigating judge. Neither the plaintiff nor her lawyer, Me Yann Le Bras, reacted immediately.
The Minister of the Interior and now of the Overseas Territories was the subject of another comparable procedure, also classified in 2018: he had been accused of abuse of weakness by a resident of Tourcoing (North) who claimed to have been coerced into sex in exchange for housing and employment. A new page that turns for the 39-year-old politician, married to Rose-Marie Devillers and father of a child, Maximilien.