France's minister for solidarity and the disabled Damien Abad faces new allegations of sexual violence against women. Last month the newly appointed minister in Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne's government strongly denied claims from two women, published by Mediapart, that he had raped them. These alleged incidents took place in late 2010 and 2011. Now a third woman has told Mediapart that Abad tried to rape her at a party at his home in Paris in early 2010.
Damien Abad did not respond to Mediapart's questions on these new allegations, but has denied them in a statement.
The third woman is 'Laëtitia' – not her real name – a local councillor for the centre-right party Les Centristes who has now decided to speak out. “I can no longer keep quiet today. I'm speaking now in order for it to stop and so that it can't start again,” said Laëtitia, who admits that it is not in her nature to “go out and talk to the press” about issues of sexual violence. But she says that the accounts of two women, published by Mediapart in late May, accusing Damien Abad of rape in 2010 and 2011, some months after she says she herself was the victim of an attempted rape by him, had left her racked with “guilt”.
She has thus decided to speak out publicly and has sought the advice of a lawyer. “The facts that have been reported to me are very serious,” her lawyer Raphaële Bialkiewicz told Mediapart. “At this stage we are analysing the case and starting to collect and cross-check information so that we can add all useful developments to it.. In particular we have had a bailiff draw up a formal legal report [editor's note, in French a 'constat d'huissier' , a report prepared by a legally-trained judicial officer which has no direct equivalent in English or American law] in relation to certain information. ”
Laëtitia is now the third woman to make an allegation of rape or attempted rape against Damien Abad, who had been president of the rightwing Les Républicains (LR) group of MPs at the National Assembly before jumping ship and joining Emmanuel Macron's camp and being named a minister. On May 21st, the day after Abad was appointed minister for solidarity and the disabled in prime minister Élisabeth Borne's new government, Mediapart revealed the stories of Margaux and Chloé. The former, a one-time centre-right political activist aged 35, had made an official complaint of rape in 2017 and the case had been closed. The latter, aged 41, had made a complaint in May 2022 to the Observatoire des Violences Sexistes et Sexuelles, a body set up by the #MeToo#Politique collective to highlight sexism and sexual violence in the world of politics. In it she described how one morning in the autumn of 2010 she had awoken in her “underwear” and in a “state of shock” with Damien Abad in a Paris hotel room after having had a drink with him the night before.
Chloé also described how she felt as if she had been “drugged” - the night before the MP had bought her a glass of champagne in an adjoining bar and she had then suffered a “blackout”. Her report was sent to both Les Républicains and Emmanuel Macron's ruling party La République en Marche, and subsequently to the prosecution authorities in Paris. Prosecutors decided that “as things stood” they would not begin an investigation because of a “lack of information that would identify the victim of the facts as reported”.
Damien Abad strongly denied the allegations against him, and referred to his handicap which he said would not have enabled him to carry out the acts of which he is accused without help. The minister has a condition called arthrogryposis which affects all four of his limbs. Asked for comment in relation to this article the minister, his lawyer Benoît Chabert, and his press spokesperson Victoire Perrin all declined to comment, despite several requests by Mediapart.
After the article was published Damien Abad made a statement to the news agency AFP in which he attacked the “carefully-chosen timetable of these publications” and the “bias” of Mediapart's investigation which he said had a “political” motivation. “As for the reported allegations, they revolt me and I categorically deny them,” said the minister. Then in a phone interview with regional broadcaster France 3 Rhône-Alpes Damien Abad referred to the current legislative elections – the decisive second round takes place this Sunday June 19th - in which he is again standing to be an MP in the Ain département or county in the south-east. “This won't unsettle me, I am continuing to campaign,” he stated.
On May 22nd, the day after Mediapart's initial revelations, prime minister Élisabeth Borne had taken a firm line on the affair. “I can assure you that if there is new information, if the case is again referred to the justice system, then we will draw all the necessary conclusions from that decision,” she said. “There can be no impunity in any issue of harassment and sexual aggression.”
When the prime minister's office was questioned on Tuesday June 14th after the publication of this article, her office replied: “The prime minister cannot comment on the anonymous accounts that you provide but she invites these women to make a formal complaint so that the justice system can do its job. She does so as prime minister but also as a woman. The justice system is there to hear what they have to say, the police, magistrates, they are today completely ready to listen and it's they who can enable the truth to be established.”
However, the affair has become a political millstone for the presidential camp, just days before Sunday's crucial vote. On Wednesday, as she campaigned in her constituency in the Calvados département or county in Normandy, Élisabeth Borne was forced to respond to a woman who was angry about the issue. “I say this as prime minister and as a woman: I invite [the women] to report the matter,” said the prime minister. “It's important that the justice system is able to determine the facts.”
When asked whether it was “disturbing” that a male politician “uses his status as a man of power to obtain favours” - a reference to the accusations against interior minister Gérald Darmanin - Élisabeth Borne replied: “But of course that disturbs me!” Her questioner then asked: “So why is he still there then? Why is no one saying anything?” To which the prime minister responded: “Hang on madam, as you know, I'm not a judge.”
“The people who represent you must be irreproachable,” continued the woman. “You can't trust people who are involved in scandals. It's no longer just some scandals, it's a whole plague of them.”
Meanwhile the revelation of the Damien Abad affair, plus his departure from Les Républicains (LR) and from his position as president of that party's group of MPs at the National Assembly, have started to persuade people to talk.
Following on from the accounts of Margaux and Chloé, Mediapart has been able to piece together the stories of three other women. The events they recount are of varying degrees of gravity but all paint a portrait of an MP whom they consider to be “problematic”.
Mediapart has also collected numerous accounts from people in parties from the centre and the right where Damien Abad has been an activist since 2007. They depict a politician who felt “omnipotent” and who is said to have used “inappropriate” gestures and comments in a professional setting, especially to women in his party who were junior in status. Meanwhile, messages show that at the end of May, after he had been appointed to the government, the minister contacted one of the women who criticised his behaviour to ask her if she had spoken to Mediapart.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
A reported attempted rape
The story that Laëtitia told Mediapart, recounted during six hours in her lawyer's office, goes back to 2009 and 2010. Her account is backed up by the statements of eight people in whom she confided or who in some cases were able to witness certain parts of her story.
In 2009 the young woman was local president of the federation of Jeunes Centristes – the youth movement of Nouveau Centre, now Les Centristes - in her département or county. At the time Damien Abad was the national president of the federation and had just become a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).
Laëtitia describes an “unhealthy” and sexist climate inside the youth federation, where hitting on women was “institutionalised” and where women were often judged just in terms of their looks or simply considered as assets in “communication”. Within this environment she felt Damien Abad was seeking to “seduce” someone, based on “the looks and compliments he gave and the comments he made”. She said: "At the start it remained within bounds. But it changed when he became an MEP. He started to feel he was omnipotent and could act with impunity.”
Laëtitia, who is now a councillor, said that at the time the MEP had suggested “nocturnal one-to-one visits” to the European Parliament which she said she declined.
Damien Abad had then become something of a “leech” in his behaviour towards her. “When we met during party meetings he would very regularly kiss me by way of greeting, holding out his arms as if to rest them on my shoulders and then rubbing them, and his hands too, on my chest,” she said. Laëtitia insists that she “pushed him off” and told him it “wasn't on” and asked him to stop, but that he would “hide behind his handicap”. She said: “He used to smile, he said it wasn't his fault and he'd show his hands. Sometimes he used to say 'I'm sorry it's also because you have big breasts, it's difficult.'”
I found his behaviour out of order and inappropriate. He was propositioning her, his advances were oppressive, insistent, out of place.
Laëtitia spoke of two particular events that “left their mark” on her. One was at a wedding of a senior figure in the Nouveau Centre party on July 31st in the Aveyron département in central southern France. She says that on the dance floor Damien Abad, who had “been drinking”, had wanted to dance with her and had started to “rub” her chest. He later made “inappropriate remarks such as 'I want to shag you'” and she says he tried to insist that she went “to his room”.
There was a witness to Damien Abad's “improper behaviour” on that evening, a woman called Brigitte Fouré. Today the mayor of the northern city of Amiens for the centre-right UDI party, at the time she was head of the Nouveau Centre party in her département. When contacted by Mediapart she said she had no desire to get involved in the affair but accepted she had a duty as a citizen to relate what she had witnessed. “On several occasions during the afternoon and evening of that wedding I saw that he was trying to get close to her and I thought his behaviour was completely out of order and inappropriate. He was propositioning her, his advances were oppressive, insistent and out of place. I felt uneasy. It made a sufficiently significant impact on me for me to remember it 12 years later, and when the affair broke I said to myself 'That doesn't really surprise me', in some respects at any rate,” she said.
Brigitte Fouré said that Laëtitia “did not go along with” Damien Abad's behaviour but that she “didn't send him packing because she wasn't in an easy situation” given the fact that he was the “president of the Jeunes Centristes”.
Laëtitia also reported other, more serious events which she said took place in the “first half of 2010”. Following a dinner for Nouveau Centre executives at the Ministry of Defence organised by Hervé Morin – then defence minister and president of the party - she said Damien Abad invited a small group, including Laëtitia, to a party at his place in the Latin Quarter in Paris. She says she accepted the invitation because she thought her friends from the party would be there. However, when she got to his place she still felt a “certain apprehension” and the first thing she did on arrival was to “listen at the door to check that that it was indeed a party and that there were indeed people there”.
That evening the MEP was in an “overexcited” mood and exuded a “feeling of omnipotence”, she said. When a neighbour came to complain about the noise she remembers how he “laughed as he said she would have to go and see Hervé Morin about it and that he, in any case, was protected by his parliamentary immunity”. She noted: “He felt above everything, it was an abuse of power.”
The MEP was also “leech-like” towards her and offered her a glass at the bottom of which she saw “something”. She recalled: “I didn't know what it was, I was wary given his past behaviour, I was afraid he'd put in something to annoy me.” She said that immediately afterwards she went to the toilet to “spit it out” of her mouth.
Her story shares some similarities with Chloé's account. The latter had accused Damien Abad of having “drugged” her. “When I read her story it really made me think about my own experience,” explained Laëtitia, who had found this “thing at the bottom of the glass sufficiently strange to tell my friends about it”. Several people in whom she confided about the “thing” in the glass were also struck by the similarity when they discovered Mediapart's revelations concerning Chloé. This is shown in several messages and statements that Mediapart has collected.
I couldn't break free, I was scared, I was shocked. I struggled, I hit him in the stomach.
Laëtitia explained that when she came out of the toilet that evening Damien Abad was “behind the door” waiting for her. She said: “I felt that something wasn't right. But at no time could I have imagined that the president of my youth movement, who was an MEP, could assault me.” According to her account things moved “very quickly”. The MEP “pushed [me] into a room opposite” then started saying “crazy things …..'You're going to feel it, it's enormous'; 'Go on, suck me'.” The young woman said: “It was as if he was in a hardcore porn film.” She said he was “pushing my head” towards his groin area and that “his penis was not out but his trousers were open”.
Though at the time she was “very sporty”, Laëtitia says that she was “extremely surprised” by the MEP's strength. “My head was trapped under his arm and against his torso, I couldn't break free, I was scared, I was shocked. I struggled, I hit him in the stomach,” she said. At this point the MEP “completely reversed the roles” she said. “It was outrageous, he had just assaulted me and he began to whine, as if he were the victim. While continuing to grip my head he kept repeating as he swayed to and fro: 'But why don't you want to sleep with me? Is it because I'm disabled?' But disabled or not, I wouldn't sleep with a man who assaulted me,” she said.
Laëtitia said that in the end she was able to “break free from him” and leave the room thanks to the sudden entrance of a fellow guest. That guest, a former activist for the centrist party, has confirmed to Mediapart that he had “seen [her] leave” but “without knowing at the time” what was happening. During a meeting with her on February 10th this year – three months before the first article published by Mediapart – the former activist said the scene had suddenly come back to him. “We got back in touch, we hadn't seen each other for several years, we were recalling our years at the Jeunes Centristes and the evenings at Damien's place, and she said 'You know that you saved my life during one of those evenings?'. She told me everything. I was both shocked and upset.”
This former party member “doesn't doubt her story” he says. During their years together at the Jeunes Centristes he said that he had himself warned Damien Abad about his behaviour towards women. “He had a tendency to be very full on, insistent, particularly when he had had a few,” said the former activist. “I told him 'Be careful, you're very full on, behave properly and show respect!' I wasn't the only one to say that to him, there were moments when he was told off over it and he was told to stop.”
Over the years Laëtitia has confided in a large number of people – her mother, her doctor, some partners, friends, politicians and party executives – as shown in messages seen by Mediapart. Sometimes she has detailed events, sometimes she has simply alluded to them, but she has often mentioned the “suspect” glass. Eight people have confirmed this to Mediapart.
Her mother, to whom she opened up in great detail in 2010, and then on several subsequent occasions, recalls that Laëtitia was “very shocked, disturbed”. Her mother said: “I was as shocked as her, I'd never have thought that in this political environment there could be people who could use force in this way. How can you then expect afterwards to represent France with integrity?”
In an official written statement Laëtitia's doctor confirmed that the young woman had told her story during a consultation in 2015 without wanting to give the name of the MEP, talking instead about an “important male politician”.
Laëtitia has also spoken about it with several politicians. The former LR senator Olivier Paccaud remembers that she had spoken to him “years ago, around 2017-2018” about “attempted abuse by Damien Abad without being very precise”. Then in the autumn of 2021, as Les Républicains were choosing their candidate for the presidential election - Damien Abad backed former minister Xavier Bertrand for whom Paccaud was a spokesperson – the senator says Laëtitia again brought up the issue and “gave me the details”. She did the same in May, after Damien Abad was appointed to the new government.
Mediapart has also collected the statements of four Les Centristes politicians and a party activist – in whom she confided between 2017 and 2022 – and of Pierre-Yves, a friend. She spoke to her friend “in a quite detailed way” in October 2020 during a dinner at which they discussed political life.
Laëtitia said some of the details of what she has now reported were known to some party colleagues at the time and she was sometimes subjected to “mockery”, she says. “When certain people saw me they mimed putting their hands out forward and that amused them. Some rubbed their hands on my arms and laughed,” she said.
Damien Abad did not respond to Mediapart's questions about Laëtitia's account of events.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Text message to an accuser after Mediapart sends questions
Since the start of the affair the minister for solidarity has strongly denied the accusations against him. On May 21st, in a written response titled “Talking points”, Damien Abad stated that “the sexual relations I have had have always been based on the principle of mutual consent”. He formally denied “any abuse of his position of seniority” and also highlighted his disability. The minister did acknowledge that on occasions he had “sent messages which were sometimes intimate”. If these had “upset or disturbed” anyone then he “regretted” that, the minister told Mediapart.
On May 23rd he was in resolute mood when facing the media. “Should an innocent man resign? I don't think so,” he declared. Yet two days earlier, the day after he was appointed to the government, Damien Abad had called 'Émilie' – not her real name – an LR party member with whom he had reportedly behaved inappropriately in a professional setting some years ago. That same morning he had received questions from Mediapart as part of our initial article. One of the questions was about his actions concerning Émilie. According to Mediapart's information, Damien Abad asked her if she had spoken to us, to which the reply was no.
The young woman then apparently offered the minister a “way out”, telling him to explain that he had apologised for his behaviour at the time – which was not the case – and that the matter had stopped there. But she soon grasped than the minister had decided to deny the accusations against him outright, going so far as to state in Le Monde that he has always been “respectful towards women”.
A few days later Émilie received a late-evening message from Damien Abad in which he asked for any news and explained to her that he was going through an “unfair” and “awful” experience. However, in the subsequent exchange of messages, seen by Mediapart, the minister did not at any time deny what Émilie accused him of, even though she had explicitly referred to it. Then on May 26th, a bank holiday, the politician's brother-in-law and Parliamentary employee Magnuson Lopes tried to call the young woman three times, without leaving a message. She did not pick up. The following day the minister tried one last time to get in touch via a message. After one message back Émilie stopped responding.
Damien Abad did not respond to Mediapart's questions about this episode.
Magnuson Lopes, meanwhile, said that he had called the young woman “just once” - a claim refuted by the information Mediapart has gathered. “It was just a call to see how she was. We've always got on well,” he said, insisting that there had “never been problems” between them and “not with Mr Abad either, for that matter”.
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- This is an abridged version of the original article in French which can be found here. Some details from this article in French have also been added.
English version by Michael Streeter