Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, targeted by a rape complaint and whose appointment arouses the anger of feminists, considered that he was the "main victim" of what he calls "slander".
“The victim in this story is me. It's me whose name they dirty. It is to me that we attribute behavior that I have never had, ”said the Minister of the Interior in an interview with Le Point, posted online Wednesday.
“It's hard to live with. But I have no right to complain, ”adds the former Minister of Public Accounts.
An "initiatory passage for those who disturb"
Gérald Darmanin was accused in 2017 of rape by a woman, Sophie Patterson-Spatz, who had requested him in 2009 when he was in charge of mission at the UMP (party became LR) to have a conviction overturned for blackmail and appeals malicious towards an ex-companion.
According to her statements, Darmanin would have dangled his support for her and she would have felt compelled to "go to the pan", as she explained to investigators. The Minister admitted to having had a sexual relationship with this woman but, according to him, freely consented.
Filed without further action at first, the procedure was recently relaunched by the Paris Court of Appeal, which requested new investigations in early June. "I am at the disposal of justice", repeats the minister in the interview, where he suggests that this affair be an "initiatory passage for those who disturb when one makes national policy".
