Will Damien Abad keep his government seat after these new accusations? After a first wave of testimonials, Mediapart (article subscribers) reveals new ones, Tuesday, June 14. The investigation site notably gives the floor to a former miss “Pays de l’Ain” or a woman who, for the article, calls herself Laëtitia, a centrist elected official.
“Today I can no longer be silent. If I speak, it’s so that it stops, so that it can’t start again”declares Laëtitia, who accuses Damien Abad of attempted rape. The facts she tells date from 2009-2010. At the time, in his department, Laetitia chairs the federation of Young Centrists: the youth movement of the New Center, recalls Mediapart. Damien Abad is newly elected MEP. While he was, according to Laëtitia, “in seduction” with some “looks, compliments, remarks”, “It twisted when he became an MEP. He fell into a feeling of permanent omnipotence and impunity”she says.
Laëtitia recounts an evening where Damien Abad would have “offered a drink”. She claims to have seen “Something”. “I didn’t know what it was, I was suspicious given his past behavior, I was afraid that he had put something in me to annoy me”she explains, adding that she immediately “spit out” his sip in the toilet.
After that, she says that Damien Abad would have waited for her “behind the door”. From then on, events would have gone “very quickly”. The MEP would have “pushed into a room opposite”. “You’re going to feel it pass, it’s huge”, “Go ahead, suck me”, would have launched the chosen one, according to the young woman. Laëtitia affirms that he would have “pushed [sa] head” towards his crotch. “His penis had not come out, but his pants were open”, she says. And to add: “My head was stuck under his arm and against his chest, I couldn’t get out of it, I was scared, I was flabbergasted. I struggled, I punched him in the stomach.”
According to his account, Damien Abad would then have “completely reversed the roles”. “He started whining, as if he were the victim”, she says. She managed to get out of this situation when a guest burst in. “But why don’t you want to sleep with me? Is it because I’m disabled?”would then have launched the chosen one. “Many of the new people who contacted us did so because they were offended by his defense of his disability”, clarified Mediapart journalist Marine Turchi.
For this new article, “we have not had a response from the Minister of Solidarity, nor from his lawyer, nor from his entourage”, also notes the journalist. But Damien Abad reacted in a message sent to AFP a few hours after the publication of the article. The one who seeks a new mandate as a deputy on Sunday in Ain, denounced the “carefully chosen schedule of these publications” and the “partiality” of the Mediapart investigation, which, according to him, has a motivation “Politics”. “As for the reported allegations, they revolt me and I categorically refute them”added the minister.