Stoic, Georges Tron cashed in his disgrace without making the slightest move.
Standing, hands behind his back, the mayor (LR) of Draveil (Essonne) is now a sex offender.
It is 9.55 p.m. this Wednesday evening and, at the end of an interminable deliberation of more than eleven hours, the Paris Assize Court of Appeal has just answered yes to the first of the 19 questions to which it had to answer: Georges Tron is guilty of a gang rape committed on his former subordinate Virginie Ettel in November 2009.
Also convicted of sexual assault in a meeting, the former secretary of state for the public service of the Fillon government was sentenced to 3 years in prison (5 years in prison, two of which were suspended).
In the process, he will spend his first night behind bars.
The fall is vertiginous for the one who had been acquitted at first instance in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) in 2018.
Her ex-cultural assistant Brigitte Gruel, found guilty of complicity in rape and sexual assault, is sentenced to 2 years in prison.
It is a whole system and an unhealthy and hypersexualized climate established at the town hall of Draveil which has just fallen.
He has repeatedly denied the accusations
The verdict is more severe than the requisitions of the Advocate General who, while demanding the conviction of the elected, had opened the door to a modification of the sentence.
Jean-Christophe Muller had requested a two-year firm sentence directly convertible under an electronic bracelet.
The court decided otherwise.
As soon as the sentence was announced, the former member of the government, elegantly dressed in a black suit, got rid of his watch which he handed to Me Antoine Vey, one of his lawyers.
Me Solange Doumic, his other counsel, holds his arm.
He grabs his cell phone and makes a final call.
Surrounded by two gendarmes, Georges Tron, who has never ceased to deny the accusations to which he was the subject, is then symbolically led into the box for the civil hearing before being taken into the bowels of the courthouse .
He will just have escaped the laying of handcuffs in public.
The only satisfaction, the court acquitted him of the charges brought by Eva Loubrieu, another of his former subordinates to the town hall of Draveil.
Hiccups, sobs, the latter leaves the room while the verdict is being read.
The court considered his statements to be imprecise and variable over time.
The jurors also recalled that their first relations, admittedly denied by Georges Tron, were initially granted.
"The facts that she denounced contributed to the decision of this evening", nevertheless greets her lawyer Me Loïc Guérin who speaks of a "victory with a bitter taste" for his client.
The conspiracy theory swept away
The jurors, on the other hand, considered that Virgine Ettel's accusations were "constant and detailed" as to the digital penetration that she explained to have undergone since her filing of complaint in 2011. This judgment will be landmark since the court not only retained the surprise , by evoking the sexual excesses of the plantar reflexology sessions of which Georges Tron was a follower, but above all because she took for granted the "moral constraint" exerted by the elected official on her former subordinate.
A constraint which the Advocate General had made the heart of his indictment.
"It is the victory of the earthen pot against the iron pot," says Vincent Ollivier, one of Virginie Ettel's lawyers.
This decision is a relief for my client, but it is also a message of hope for many women in this country.
"" Virginie Ettel can now move on to another life, satisfied Me Laure Heinich, her second lawyer.
She hadn't come with an idea of revenge or detention.
She was just asking to be heard.
"
By the way, the court also brushed aside the conspiracy theory supported by the 63-year-old former Secretary of State.
She also hardly appreciated the maneuvers put in place by the elected official to discredit his accusers as well as the pressure blows to which they were subjected.
The motivations are scathing.
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Incarcerated, Georges Tron is preparing to lose his mandate as mayor.
The court attached his sentence to a six-year ineligibility sentence.
He has ten days to appeal.
