The lawyers of Gérald Darmanin counter-attack while their customer is at the heart of a controversy over a charge of rape since his appointment at Place Beauvau. The lawyers denounced as "false information and defamatory remarks" against their client, in a press release sent Tuesday, the Agence France-Presse.
The new minister of the Interior since 2017 of a complaint of a woman, Sophie Patterson-Spatz, who had sought in 2009 to try to overturn a conviction. According to the complainant, Gérald Darmanin him would have dangled its support and she would have felt compelled to " go to pot ". He says that it was the opposite of a relationship based on free consent.
The perspective of "prosecution"
" Gérald Darmanin has never, in any case, exchanged an intervention, that he had not the power to bring them to fruition, in exchange for a sexual favor. He has always strongly disputed this accusation, or any other abuse of authority, including during his hearing on February 8, 2018 ", insist Me Pierre-Olivier On Me and Mathias Chichportich in their press release. They further reserve the right "to continue from now on, any defamatory statement" aimed Gérald Darmanin. Contacted by Agence France-Presse, the lawyers of the complainant, Ms. Kim Tuaillon-Hibon and Me Marjolaine Vignola, were not available to react in the immediate future.
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The complaint of Sophie Patterson-Spatz initially had been closed without investigation by the prosecutor's office in early 2018. The investigations " have failed to establish the absence of consent of the complainant and were not characterized further the existence of duress, a threat, a surprise or any kind of violence to his place ", explained the prosecutor. Sophie Patterson-Spatz had then filed a complaint with constitution of civil part in order to obtain the designation of a magistrate.
August 16, 2018, a judge had issued "an order of non-lieu "to inform",, believing that, in the light of the investigations that the facts were not made up and that there was no need to investigate further. The complainant challenged this decision, but the court of appeal of Paris had judged his appeal out of time, before being forced by the Court of cassation, in November 2019, to re-examine the issue. In mid-June, the same court of appeal ordered the resumption of the investigations against the one who was still minister of the Action and of the public Accounts.
