Damien Abad case: new accusations target the minister, who "categorically refutes them"

The Mediapart investigation site reports this Tuesday new testimonies which implicate Damien Abad.

Among them, a centrist elected official who denounces an attempted rape in 2010. The Minister of Solidarity, already accused by two women of sexual violence, had not responded to Mediapart's requests on Tuesday evening but denied the previous accusations altogether.

Asked by AFP, the man who is seeking a new mandate as deputy in Ain denounced the "carefully chosen schedule of these publications" and the "partiality" of the Mediapart investigation, which according to him has a "political" motivation. .

“As for the reported allegations, they revolt me ​​and I categorically refute them,” added Damien Abad.

“If I speak, it is so that it stops, that he cannot start again”, explained the elected centrist who testifies this Tuesday and that Mediapart names Laëtitia, a modified first name.

She told the newspaper that she had tried to "forget all that" for ten years, but that the accounts of the two other women on alleged acts of rape dating back to 2010 and 2011 and published on the investigation site in May, full of "guilt".

The minister had firmly denied these two accusations, highlighting in particular his disability.

“It is physically impossible for me to commit the acts described,” he assured.

Laëtitia first describes an “unhealthy” and sexist climate at the federation of Young Centrists in her department, which she chaired.

Damien Abad, who was then national president of the Young Centrists, had just been elected European deputy.

“It twisted.

He fell into a feeling of permanent omnipotence and impunity,” she says.

She assures that he had become "sticky", offering her "one-on-one night visits" which she says she declined, and that he sometimes rubbed his arms and hands on her breasts at the time of kiss him.

"Surprised" by its strength

The elected centrist says that during a festive evening in 2010 at Damien Abad's, the latter offered her a glass at the bottom of which she says she "saw something".

Having " been afraid that he had put something to annoy her ", she would have gone to the toilets to spit out her sip and it was on leaving that she would have discovered that Abad was waiting for her " behind the door ".

The deputy would then have pushed her into a room, uttered “insanities” and pushed the head of the young woman towards her crotch.

"His penis had not come out, but his pants were open," she told Mediapart.

She claims to have been “surprised” by the strength of the deputy and to have struggled.

He would then have "completely reversed the roles", posing as the victim.

Laëtitia explains that she was able to leave the room thanks to the intervention of a third party.

The story of this elected centrist was supported by the testimonies of eight people, to whom she had confided or who had been able to attend certain elements that she describes, indicates Mediapart.

As a reminder, the first woman who accuses Damien Abad had alerted the Observatory of sexist and sexual violence in politics on May 13.

Which was then forwarded to the public prosecutor.

But the Paris prosecutor's office did not open a preliminary investigation "as it stands", for lack of "elements allowing the victim of the facts denounced to be identified".

The second alleged victim filed a rape complaint in 2017 against the chosen one.

Complaint dismissed in December of the same year due to an insufficiently characterized offence.