One week after the appointment of Gérald Darmanin to the Ministry of the Interior, the controversy has not abated: repeated feminist demonstrations, murderous tribunes, opposition critics ... During his meeting on July 14, the president of the Republic Emmanuel Macron did not fail to be arrested on these rape accusations which weigh on the new boss of the Place Beauvau. "There is a procedure for formal reasons that comes back," relativized the head of state about the recent resumption of investigations decided by the justice. And Emmanuel Macron to present himself as "the guarantor of the presumption of innocence".
What does the Darmanin dossier really contain? Was the case really reopened just for formal reasons? Not only. On June 9, the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal overturned the dismissal order made in this case by the investigating judge but for a reason that is as much in form as in substance : the magistrate had justified his decision on the only conclusions of the preliminary investigation classified by the parquet floor of Paris, without himself carrying out the least act of investigation. He is therefore requested to launch investigations into the now "first cop in France".
The facts, dated March 2009, are old but the first rape complaint only appeared in June 2017. Why did you wait eight years to go to court? The appointment of Gérald Darmanin to the government would have served as a trigger, bringing the alleged victim to life again. She allegedly “exploded,” according to her husband's own statements. After speaking with a feminist activist, the accuser indicates that she became aware that rape could be committed without physical violence.
"I too will have to help me"
Go back. On March 17, 2009, Olga Patterson, 36, a UMP sympathizer and former escort girl, obtained an appointment with Gérald Darmanin. The young man, aged 26, is already a municipal councilor in Tourcoing and a project manager in the legal affairs department of the UMP. The 30-year-old wants the elected official to intervene on his behalf and use his connections to have a suspended sentence of 10 months in prison suspended for "blackmail, malicious calls and threats" against an ex-boyfriend suspended from his criminal record. A conviction linked, according to her, to her former activities as an escort girl, which benefited her former companion financially. Since then, the ex-call girl married Pierre S., an engineer in finance, and ended his activities. She has been knocking on all doors for five years to have her conviction reviewed. No result.
The meeting between the sympathizer UMP and the young elected official takes place at the headquarters of the party, in Paris. The 30-year-old comes to the meeting with a file under her arm which, according to her, she hands over to her interlocutor. Gérald Darmanin promises to take care of it. "He interrupted the interview by telling me that there were cameras and microphones in his office," she said to investigators from the 1st district of the Paris judicial police (DPJ). Half an hour later, she receives a phone call from the elected official who offers her dinner to discuss her case. She accepts.
At the table, his interlocutor promises to help him and “write as the chosen one”. Gérald Darmanin, she says, then took her hand saying but "I too will have to help me". "He knew my former activity from the file I left him," said the complainant. The young woman would then have left "the table smiling, would have gone" to the toilet to calm (his) panic "then on his return would have told Gérald Darmanin his desire to return home to join her husband.
"It seemed endless"
Finally, the elected official and the sympathizer UMP will go together to the Candles, a swinger club of the capital before going "hand in hand" to the Montpensier hotel (Ier arrondissement), an unpretentious establishment, chosen by Darmanin. There, Olga Patterson explains that she asked her partner to buy toiletries. Still living with his mother at the time, the future minister would have quickly jumped to her mother's home 10 minutes away on foot to fulfill the wishes of the 30-something. When he returns, they have sex. "And there, I went to the pan," confides Olga bluntly [...] "I stayed a long time, it seemed endless. I thought only of my innocence, and of projecting myself into my future life. After we did it again, I had to go back to the pan. "
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The thirty-something then goes home on foot and tells her husband everything. What will confirm it, on PV, describing a companion "prostrate". The alleged victim accuses the current Minister of the Interior of having exerted "moral pressure", by imposing on him a sexual relation without her having the choice to refuse it, in the light of the hope that she placed in an intervention by the elected official in his favor.
The exploitation of Olga Patterson's phone reveals several SMS exchanges with Gérald Darmanin. He regularly suggests having a drink, without any message with a sexual connotation. She sent him many messages about the letter promised to the Keeper of the Seals. "Abuse of his position!" For my part it is being a dirty idiot! When you know the effort it took me to have sex with you, ”she wrote to him. Darmanin replies: "You are right, I am probably a dirty idiot. How to forgive myself ? "
The June 2017 complaint was dismissed a month later by the Paris public prosecutor's office, the alleged victim having failed to report to the police. Olga Patterson explained that she was afraid of not being believed and of being discredited in the light of her former activities. A second complaint was filed on January 22, 2018. The complainant was then heard by the investigators, Gérald Darmanin too, in open hearing.
Having become Minister of Action and Public Accounts, he confirmed that he had received Olga Patterson at the UMP, without however giving him any files. He would then have promised to inform him, criminal law not being his specialty. According to him, it was the complainant who contacted him again, offering to go to dinner. At the table, she would even have sexually solicited him. The elected representative confides to the police that he is "a little embarrassed but also sensitive to this gesture", emphasizing his young age at the time, 26 years old, compared to that of his interlocutor. "Impressed", he remembers, that evening, that Olga Patterson is "very feminine, pretty and attractive wearing very high heels, in an outfit very different from that which she had during their first interview".
Meetings on the initiative of Darmanin
Gérald Darmanin gives the evening sequence a version similar to that of the complainant: the passage to the Candles then a sexual relation at the hotel. But only one, according to him, and consented. He describes to the police a partner "sensual, lascivious, demonstrating a dominant behavior, taking things in hand". The elected official then allegedly met Olga Patterson at least three times, during coffee or drinks, and admits that these meetings were on his own initiative. During his hearing, he specifies that he did not intervene on his behalf, that he advised him to consult lawyers, and that he only wrote a letter to the Keeper of the Seals as a municipal councilor to whom he received in response a standard letter from the Ministry of Justice.
On February 16, 2018, the public prosecutor of Paris dismissed the complaint for lack of offense. Less than a month later, in March, Olga Patterson brought a civil action through her lawyer Me Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon. On August 16, 2018, the investigating judge issued a dismissal order. We know the rest.
Are we in a moral matter or in the case of a criminal offense? The new designated judge will have to decide after having carried out his own investigations. The civil party notably requests a confrontation between the victim and the alleged perpetrator. "A classification without continuation, a second classification without continuation, then a dismissal, it is the proof by three of the presumption of innocence", reacts Me Pierre-Olivier Sur, the lawyer of Gérald Darmanin.