the minister disputes the facts

For his first public statement since the start of the case, Damien Abad, accused by two women of being guilty of rapeclaimed his innocence. “I repeat firmly, I have never raped a single woman in my life. You will understand that discussing these subjects publicly is extremely painful for me. From now on, I devote myself to my mission as minister“, he said, refuting the hypothesis of a resignation.

The new Minister of Solidarity has been in turmoil since Saturday and the publication of an article by Mediapart, which relays two testimonies of women accusing him of rapes between 2010 and 2011. The first was sent by mail, on May 13, to the Observatory of Sexual Violence in Politics, an activist association. For the time being, no complaint has been filed in this case, but the organization says it has alerted La République en Marche and Les Républicains, the former party of Damien Abad. The other testimony has already been the subject of two complaints, dismissed for lack of sufficiently characterized facts.