It is one of two cases involving alleged abuse of power which have dogged interior minister Gerald Darmanin since he became a member of the French government under President Emmanuel Macron. A complaint by a woman called Sophie Patterson-Spatz, which was dropped without charge in February 2018, was re-opened in June 2020 and is now the subject of a judicial investigation for alleged “rape”. The probe is being led by investigating judge Mylène Huguet.
At the time of the events at the heart of the claims Darmanin was a young councillor for the right-wing UMP party in whose legal department he also worked as a policy officer. A number of SMS messages, a letter sent to the minister of justice and some witness statements suggest that the young politician might have used his power – real or presumed – to obtain sexual favours from the complainant, who was herself a party activist. She had gone to UMP headquarters to ask for help in a legal case. She said she had sex with him under duress; Darmanin, who denies any wrongdoing, says it was “consensual”.
Mediapart has now seen the file of the preliminary investigation and the judge's questioning of the complainant on October 28th 2020 and of Gérald Darmanin on December 14th 2020. The file reveals:
A different side of Gérald Darmanin from the young, naïve and inexperienced UMP policy officer that he portrayed to detectives in 2018.
SMS chats at the time with the complainant show him being insistent, which contradicts his line of defence.
During questioning by the judge he changed his version of events from before over a key exchange of SMS messages, in which the complainant accused him of having “abused his position”.
He also offered new explanations to justify some embarrassing elements of the case and suggested there was a political motive behind Sophie Patterson's complaint.
The minister of the interior is currently placed under the status of “assisted witness” in the case. This status, which in French law lies between that of simple witness and being placed under formal investigation as a suspect, can change during the investigation if there is “serious or consistent evidence” that a person has been involved in an offence.
When contacted by Mediapart lawyers representing Gérald Darmanin – who benefits from the presumption of innocence – did not want to make “any comment” on the substance of the case.
The lawyers, Mathias Chichportich and Pierre-Olivier Sur, pointed out that according to the law, as their client was “named in a [criminal] complaint and claim for damages, he could not be heard simply as a witness” and that the “status of assisted witness is therefore the most favourable status he can be granted”. This showed that the “judges consider that he is not responsible for any offence”, they said.
Lawyer Marjolaine Vignola, who along with Élodie Tuaillon-Hibon represents the complainant, said that in her view the status of assisted witness “enables the judicial institution to demonstrate that it is considering our client's complaint, that proceedings are advancing, without the risk of causing Gérald Darmanin's resignation as, according to [President] Emmanuel Macron, if a member of the government is placed under formal examination they have to quit.”
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The events go back to March 2009. At the time Gérald Darmanin was aged 26 and a rising star in what was then the ruling centre-right party the UMP (now Les Républicains). He was a policy officer in the party's legal service and a municipal councillor in Tourcoing, on the French border with Belgium. Sophie Patterson-Spatz – Spatz is her married name - was 37 at the time, and herself a member of the UMP.
Sophie Patterson had been fighting for several years to clear her name after being convicted in 2003 for “attempted blackmail”, “malicious telephone calls” and “death threats” in a case involving her ex-partner. She had appealed against this conviction and had written letters to elected representatives asking for assistance. In 2009, having come out of “four years of depression” caused by a conviction she saw as an “injustice”, she went to the headquarters of her party, the UMP, to seek help. Here she was greeted by an official, Marie-Chantal Schwartz, to whom she explained her plight. The party official then pointed her in the direction of Gérald Darmanin, whom she introduced as a “specialist in legal affairs”.
When they were questioned separately by the judge in 2020 Gérald Darmanin and Sophie Patterson gave conflicting versions of events, down to the smallest details.
The complainant stated that during her meeting with the councillor at the UMP headquarters she had handed him a “file”; Darmanin himself insists she did not. She said that she had received a call from Gérald Darmanin “between 20 minutes and half-an-hour” after this meeting, and that she had been surprised he had got back in touch “so quickly”. She said that the councillor had told her that the file was “going to be assessed” and invited her for dinner. She said she had instead suggested “lunch or a coffee”. But he said his timetable did not allow him to do that and so in the end she agreed to dinner. Darmanin had then called her “three or four days later” to tell her he had booked a table at Chez Françoise, a restaurant in Paris she did not know. However, Darmanin himself told the judge that as far as he recalled it was she who had “suggested going to dinner”, even if he agreed he had chosen the location.
Sophie Patterson said that she had not seen Gérald Darmanin again until the evening of the events in question; he, however, said that he had seen her “at a large meeting organised by the UMP at the National Assembly”.
On the night in question, March 17th 2009, she said they spoke solely about her case over dinner at Chez Françoise. The young councillor seemed to have already read the file and knew the case “by heart”, Sophie Patterson told the judge. “He said that he was going to deal with my case … that he knew what it was to experience an injustice. He spoke to me of his grandfather who was an infantryman ... he said that he was going to introduce me to Nicolas Sarkozy … that he was going to help me.” At the end of dinner she says that he took her hand and said to her: “You too, you'll have to help me.” Sophie Patterson said she was “devastated” at this and went off to the toilet.
However, Gérald Darmanin insisted they had “spoken about many things” over dinner, that their relationship was one of fellow UMP “activists”, and that at the time he did not know Nicolas Sarkozy. He insisted that having gone to the toilet, she had come back and sat next to him and had “on several occasions put her hand on my knee, my bottom and my private parts”.
Sophie Patterson, meanwhile, said that the young UMP employee had asked her “a final favour”. This was to go with him to the swingers club Les Chandelles in Paris. She told the judge that she had “no desire” to go there and that she had done so because she wanted her case “to be examined”. She said that the pair had gone there in a taxi. He said that she had gone there “in her car, a Mercedes” that she had been driving that evening.
The complainant told the judge that she was wearing “Jitrois leather trousers” that evening, something which her former husband also told the investigation. She said she was also wearing a Wolford roll-neck bodysuit and that she hoped that she would not be allowed into the swingers club wearing such an outfit. She explained that she had been to the club once before with a client at the time she had worked as an escort. According to her, it was because Gérald Darmanin was a “regular” that the doorman eventually let them in. He denied this, and stated she was “not in trousers”, without giving further details.
Sophie Patterson said that once they were inside the swingers club she had done her utmost to “avoid” Gérald Darmanin, by going to the bar and, on several occasions, to the smoking area. He denied this. “She did not seek to avoid me. We kissed and she said that she wanted me,” he told the judges. However, she said that she told him she wanted to go home and that her husband was waiting for her.
Darmanin claimed that later she asked him to take her to his house and that he “suggested going to an hotel” because when he was in Paris he lived with his mother. Sophie Patterson denied this and said that she had not wanted sex with him, but that he had once again assured her he was able to help with her case and that he had repeated: “Me too, I'll need to be helped.”
The hotel was 250 metres from the club and once they got there the complainant asked Darmanin to go and buy her some toiletry products. Sophie Patterson told the judge she did this in the hope that given the lateness of the hour he would “give up” on having sex with her. But Gérald Darmanin said it was just so she could wash herself.
She then said that when he returned with the products she was still sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed. He claims, on the contrary, that “she was in the bathroom completely naked”. She then came out “in underwear and stilettos”. She said that he asked to have sex with her without a condom, but that she refused and at his request she searched in his suit where she said she found numerous condoms, in all likelihood obtained at the swingers club. “That's untrue,” he said. “She fetched a condom which was in her bag.”
Gérald Darmanin described how during sex she had taken charge and had “controlled” her actions “with self-assurance”. However, Sophie Patterson said that she had detached herself from what was happening and had been “on autopilot”. She said: “It seemed interminable to me.” She said on several occasions during the evening she had told Gérald Darmanin that she wanted to go home because her husband was waiting for her, and had “thought” several times about leaving, though had not managed to do so.
After the meal at Chez Françoise “I went down to the toilets, I sat on the floor and I couldn't breath. I was suffocating … I said to myself that he was a real arsehole and I wanted to get out of there,” Sophie Patterson told the judge. It was the same story at the hotel, where she thought she would ultimately “clear off out of it” but did not in the end have the “strength” to do so. “I dealt with it in automatic mode … I didn't have a choice, this case was my life. Getting my name cleared was the only thing that could give me back my life.”
“What is striking is obviously Ms Patterson's inability to get herself out of this hotel room, but she was in a situation of passive submission and influence in the hope of establishing her innocence, in a state of shock with dissociative disorder,” said the psychologist who later examined the complainant.
Gérald Darmanin said that after sex the two had slept side by side and that he had left first the next day because he had to go to work. Sophie Patterson, however, said that they had not slept and that she was the first to leave. “Before leaving the hotel room I asked him if it was just me, and he replied that it had happened before. I was taken aback. However, it made me feel good to know I wasn't the only one,” she told the judge. “That didn't happen,” countered Gérald Darmanin.
SMS messages which contradict part of Gérald Darmanin's defence
Gérald Darmanin did not come across in exactly the same way during his questioning by the judge in December 2020 as he did when first questioned by detectives in February 2018. With the police the then-public accounts minister portrayed himself at the time of the events simply as a 26-year-old “policy officer” who had only been hired “a few weeks” before by the UMP; that he had no power and had been asked for help by an “older woman” who was “persistent, determined and who had a strong personality”. According to his statement it was Sophie Patterson who took the initiative at each stage of the evening in question, and it was she, too, who showed “dominant behaviour” during sex. “That was the first time that a woman had behaved in that way with me,” he stated, explaining that he had felt “surprised”, “impressed” and “a little awkward but also receptive” to her advances.
But when he was questioned by the judge, events appeared in a different light. For example, he was asked about the dinner at Chez Françoise, a restaurant much frequented by French politicians. Gerald Darmanin accepted that it was he who had “in all likelihood” chosen it. And that he had indeed had dinner with the UMP activist because he thought she was “pretty and nice”.
Back in 2018 he had told detectives that he had “no memory of having suggested” that they went to the swingers club Les Chandelles. But when questioned by the judge, he said that he “didn't know” and that the decision to go there was probably a joint one made between the two of them. He also admitted that he had been in a swingers club before. In addition, Gérald Darmanin seemed well-informed about the place, referring to it as a “quite well-known swingers club” in which he knew that condoms were available “in the rooms”. And on the evening in question he noted that while there had been a few customers there, there had not been “lots of people” in the club.
Sophie Patterson insisted that several days after the events of that evening Gérald Darmanin had apologised to her, and said that he had acted as he did because he had not been at his best following the loss of his father. She had accepted his apology. “In all likelihood I did say that my father was ill … she was very insistent and I was trying to keep my distance from her,” said the minister, though he denied having offered any apology as he had done “nothing reprehensible”.
One piece of information supported the complainant's version of events about this; in an email obtained by the investigation and sent on April 3rd 2009 to her husband Pierre Spatz, an IT engineer, Sophie Patterson had asked if he could find information about “Gérald's father” on the internet. That same evening her husband had replied: “Unfortunately I haven't found any information on Gérald's father.”
When questioned, Mr Spatz himself said: “Sophie, who has a lot of empathy, had forgiven him and even asked me to check if Mr Darmanin senior had died. I didn't find anything on the internet.” He told detectives in 2018 that he had continued to check for information “every year” until he made a surprising discovery. “I have recently learned that he was alive,” he told the police officers. In fact the minister's father died in 2019, as Gérald Darmanin himself told the judges.
After their night together in March 2009 Sophie Patterson and Gérald Darmanin continued to speak by phone until September 30th 2010 and saw each other again “twice” according to her; “more than twice” according to him.
She insisted that she had kept in touch solely to make sure she got what she said he had promised her; a letter to the then justice minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, asking for her appeal to be examined. Did Gérald Darmanin deliberately take his time in writing to Michèle Alliot-Marie, and then in sending Sophie Patterson the exchange of letters he had with the minister, while continuing to ask her out her for a drink? That is what the complainant herself claims.
Darmanin wrote to the justice minister on November 3rd 2009, six months after the events of March that year. In his letter, which has been handed to the investigation, he explained that Sophie Patterson had appealed following a “minor conviction” and he asked the UMP minister to meet “Madame Patterson” or at least to “ensure that her case”, which had been sent to her department, was “examined seriously”. The complainant insisted that he send her a copy of the letter, and she received this on December 17th 2009.
Justice minister Michèle Alliot-Marie replied to Gérald Darmanin on March 30th 2010. She confirmed that the “appeal is currently in the course of being examined at the Cour de Cassation”, referring to the country's top appeal court. But she refused to get involved herself. “It's not possible for me to express judgement on decisions of the justice system or to intervene in the process of current proceedings,” she wrote.
Sophie Patterson had meanwhile got in touch with Gérald Darmanin once more about her case, and on April 3rd 2010 he sent her an SMS telling her about the minister's response and pointing out that the letter “mentions the fact that your appeal is being examined”. But he did not say that the minister had refused to intervene in the case.
Sophie Patterson said that she only finally received a copy of the minister's letter six months later, on September 30th 2010, and had broken off all contact with the councillor and UMP employee at that point. Gérald Darmanin, meanwhile, insists he sent a copy of the minister's letter by email in April 2010 and then gave her a “physical” copy of it at the end of September that year. Their conversations had stopped abruptly at that time because he had received a “call” from Sophie Patterson's husband and because he had by then married his fiancée. However, the first call from Pierre Spatz dates from February 17th 2010 – seven months earlier – and his marriage took place in June 2010.
He does not deny, meanwhile, that he was slow in sending her a copy of the first letter. “So she was able to criticise me for having lied about the existence of this letter and of having exploited a position – something I deny – which I didn't have anyway,” he said.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
The minister also told the judges that he had kept his “distance” because Sophie Patterson was becoming “insistent”. Their SMS messages, which now form part of the investigation file, show otherwise however. When she wrote to him it was most often to ask for the letters. “Can you email me the letters that you spoke to me about please?” she texted in one. And another read: “Don't forget my letter to Alliot Marie, thanks”. Another simply said: “My letter?”
Gérald Darmanin initiated most of the message chats. In 36 messages he asked to see her or repeated his request to see her, and in four he asked to speak to her on the phone. This was despite the fact that on several occasions Sophie Patterson explained to him that she no longer wanted to see him.
At 9.49pm on October 27th 2009 he messaged:
“Free for a drink? Gérald.”
“Don't contact me again!!!!” she replied.
“As you wish, even if I would like to have a last drink.” And later: “I'd like you to call me please....Gérald.”
A few days later, at midnight on November 4th 2009, he wrote to her again:
“Goodnight. Gérald.”
“Forget my number!!!!!!” she responded.
“Ok but let's have a last drink,” he replied.
On December 8th 2009 he again asked to see her. “So, I really want you to agree to another dinner or another drink … take care,” he messaged. Then on December 16th he texted: “So, as it's the end of the year, would you agree to having a drink this evening?”
In the night of December 16th to the 17th she replied with an incendiary message. “Abusing his position! As far as I'm concerned that's being a real arsehole!!! Especially when one's hurting, you're well suited to politics!!!” And then she wrote: “When you know the effort it took to me to fuck you!!!! So that you'd deal with my case.”
He replied at 5.21 am: “You're right, I am without doubt a real arsehole. How can I be forgiven?” Later he begged: “Please give me a chance. Are you free this evening?”
Sophie Patterson asked for a copy of his letter to the minister of justice and he sent it to her by email and followed up with a new request. “Ok for this evening? A drink around 10pm?”.
When he got no response Gérald Darmanin messaged: “Can you tell me about this evening so I can organise myself? 10pm too late?” He later wrote: “Clearly you don't want to see me. But you never know, you can when you want, I'm working ...”
At 10pm she replied: “I'm with someone and can't contact you at the moment.”
“OK, around midnight?” he asked again. “Do you think you'll be free before 1am?” he asked again, an hour later.
On Boxing Day 2009 Gérald Darmanin asked her again, on two occasions, to have a “drink” that same evening. “Sorry, I'm with my loved one,” she replied. Four hours later, at 11pm, he tried again. “Free now?” he messaged having asked if she was “satisfied with my letter [editor's note, to the justice minister].” Then he wrote: “You don't seem to want to have time for me … that's a pity.” But in January he tried again asking: “Are you free for a drink tonight?”
Three days later Sophie Patterson once more made clear her anger. “I'm going to go out and report your dubious practices !!!! your letter to the Ministry of the Interior is a fake!!!!” she wrote. “What are you on about …. for a start, it was a letter to the Ministry of Justice,” he replied, suggesting several times that they see each other and that he bring her “a new copy” of his letter to the minister. On February 3rd he assured her that “the letter has indeed arrived” at the Ministry of Justice. When she wrote saying that she felt “tired” and “washed up” and that she would not be able to “hold on much longer”, Gérald Darmanin again suggested a drink and then repeated that request.
In April, having informed Sophie Patterson that he had got a response from the minister of justice, he several times suggested having an evening drink with her. On June 22nd he said that he was waiting for her at the Costes restaurant in Paris and messaged her four times. “I'm waiting a little longer in the hope you'll come by; I came back for you.” Having received no news he said: “Clearly you no longer want to speak to me.”
At the end of September Sophie Patterson got back in touch again to obtain Michèle Alliot-Marie's response. He suggested going to see her in the evening to give it to her. On September 30th she replied that she was at a restaurant and not available before “half past midnight one o'clock” and suggested alternatively meeting for dinner the next week.
Sophie Patterson told the judges that she had got back in touch with Gérald Darmanin in July 2012 when he was elected a Member of Parliament with “ironic” messages that implicitly referred to her case. “You're surely not going to get involved in legal miscarriages? With making legal appeals more accessible? Are you still pathetic? Or are you working for just causes?” she asked. She told him she was on Saint-Barthélémy, a French collectivity in the Caribbean, and said ironically: “Catch a plane? … Doesn't Douillet have a jet? [Editor's note, a reference to the former sports minister David Douillet for whom Darmnain had been chief of staff].” That day again Gérald Darmanin suggested that they should “have coffee”.
'I shouldn't have met her'
When questioned by the judge about these SMS messages, the minister's response was to refer to verbal conversations he had with the complainant, information which cannot be independently verified. So when the judges referred to the exchange of texts on December 17th 2009 in which Sophie Patterson attacked what she saw an an abuse of power by the young politician, Gérald Darmanin replied: “ … her SMS was a response to a conversation we had to have on the phone.” The judge also pointed out that, though he claimed the actual reason Sophie Patterson had rebuked him was because she had betrayed her husband over him, there was no mention of this “at any time” in the SMS messages. The minister responded: “She criticised me about this on the phone and when we met”.
During his questioning by the judge Gérald Darmanin also advanced a new argument to explain some of his behaviour: the fact that he was “engaged” at the time of the events. When questioned by detectives back in 2018 the minister had simply referred in passing to a “girlfriend with whom he had plans to get married”. Before the judge he referred to his partner many times, to explain some embarrassing episodes. These included, for example, the apology that Sophie Patterson says he made after their night together in March 2009, and the abrupt end to their contact in 2010.
He said that Sophie Patterson was “very insistent about seeing him again” and so he said he told her that he had a “fiancée and plans to get married”. He later kept a “distance” between them because he “didn't want her to call my girlfriend”. He added: “I obviously didn't feel great because I'd cheated on my fiancée.”
Gérald Darmanin again referred to his “fiancée” when explaining the SMS messages in which Sophie Patterson claimed he had “abused his position”. When first questioned about the meaning of these messages by detectives in 2018 he had said: “She said that she had cheated on her husband with me. I don't remember those conversations in detail.” When questioned by the judge the minister gave another explanation: her expression “real arsehole” related to the “fact that I had cheated on my fiancée” because “on the evening of the events (Sophie Patterson) didn't know that I was with someone”. He said: “That SMS has nothing to do with the sex that we had had nine months earlier.”
He mentioned his fiancée again to justify why he had not paid for dinner at the restaurant or for drinks at Les Chandelles. “Being engaged and having a joint account with my fiancée I couldn't pay by cheque or by card for items in a swingers club.” This was an important issue for Gérald Darmanin, who depicted an evening in which, after dinner at the restaurant, it was Sophie Patterson who had driven events. Yet Mediapart understands that at the time he had a personal bank account in just his name at the BRED bank and had a debit card linked to it. He had also stated that he had in all likelihood “paid for the hotel room the next morning” when he left. During the preliminary investigation detectives found no trace of any payment for Les Chandelles on Sophie Patterson's account. They did not go through Gérald Darmanin's personal or joint accounts.
Finally, the minister of the interior suggested to the judge that there was a political motivation behind the complaint made by Sophie Patterson, who was a member of the UMP. This followed his “appointment to Emmanuel Macron's government in May 2017”. Though Darmanin had been a politician in the right-wing UMP, and also its successor party Les Républicains (LR), in March 2017 he announced he would no longer support the LR presidential candidate François Fillon in that year's election and he quit the party. Two months later he became public accounts minister in the new government of the victorious Emmanuel Macron and subsequently joined the president's centrist La République en Marche party. “She had campaigned for François Fillon to the end and I'm certain that she was mad at me for having joined the president's team … I think that she didn't want me to be a minister because, in her eyes, I had betrayed my political family,” Gerald Darmanin said of the complainant.
This argument does not fit with the conclusions of a psychological assessment of Sophie Patterson carried out during the preliminary investigation. This 51-page report was delivered on February 9th 2018 by a clinical psychologist working at the Court of Appeal in Paris, and it says nothing about a desire for political revenge. On the contrary, the psychologist highlights in the complainant an “intense” level of “traumatic symptomatology [editor's note, characteristic symptoms] associated with the type of rape carried out by a figure of authority and trust”.
The report depicts Sophie Patterson as a “woman of above average intelligence” who has had a difficult life and has a “complex” personality but who is “grounded in reality”. Her husband, from whom she separated in 2014, gave a similar assessment when he was questioned. He described her as a person of “integrity”, “kind”, “volcanic while also being very fragile” and someone who “can't bear injustice” and who is “bighearted”.
“It seems that Mr Gérald Darmanin was unable to understand Ms Sophie Patterson's lack of desire because on the face of it at no time did he encourage her to leave but on the contrary he insisted on several occasions on pulling her into a downward spiral of submission and obedience, in a context in which Ms Sophie Patterson was fragile, at a time of a desperate quest to be declared innocent,” the psychologist said in his assessment.
During questioning Gérald Darmanin was asked about the issue of abuse of power. He repeated: “As far as I was concerned there was no link between the sex that we had and the reason for which she'd come to the UMP. This sex was not in any way recompense.” The minister said that he had “never abused a position which, incidentally, I didn't have at the time”. If there had been any “psychological harm” then he was “not the one responsible”, he said. Today his one regret about the matter was that he “shouldn't have met her”.
In February 2018 the preliminary investigation was wrapped up three days after the minister was questioned. Prosecutors decided to drop the case with no further action as in their view the investigation had not established the “absence of consent by the complainant” nor had it found the “existence of coercion, threat, surprise or any violence against her”.
Following that decision by the prosecution, Sophie Patterson filed her own complaint, seeking damages, and this led to an investigation being opened in June 2020 under an independent investigating judge. Meanwhile Gérald Darmanin is taking legal action for defamation, a case which is still ongoing.
The accusation of abuse of power is at the heart of another case which targeted the minister. In 2018 a resident of Tourcoing who was living on benefit payments made a formal complaint over “abuse” of a person in a vulnerable situation. She told detectives that she “felt obliged” to have sex with Gérald Darmanin - who was then mayor of Tourcoing – in 2016 so that he would help her in a request for housing.
Letters obtained by Mediapart show that the mayor contacted social housing landlords just after the two had had sex. In the end none of the organisations contacted helped the young woman. But Gérald Darmanin had sent her his letters and the replies he received to show her that her case was “currently being pursued”.
An investigation was opened into “abuse of weakness” and “influence peddling” but was dropped after three months. The minister did not deny having sex nor sending the letters on the woman's behalf. But Gérald Darmanin said he had “never abused any woman” nor abused “my power”.
Today Sophie Patterson's lawyers want those proceedings to be joined to their case because of the “apparent similarities” they have in terms of the “nature” of the allegations against Gérald Darmanin.
In both cases Gérald Darmanin had sex with a woman who had come to him for help, in one case over a legal issue, the other over housing. In both cases he had sent letters as a political representative, leaving the women to believe that he had influence.
On January 26th Mediapart sent ten detailed questions to Gérald Darmanin's lawyers, who did not wish to respond to them; they sent the comments cited earlier in this article.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter