PARIS — Rape accusations against a newly appointed minister disrupted the start of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term on Monday, with the allegations coming amid a growing reckoning over sexism and sexual abuse by French political figures.
According to Mediapart, a French investigative media outlet, two women have accused Damien Abad (the minister for solidarity and for people with disabilities) of raping them in 2010 or 2011.
42-year old Mr. Abad denies the allegations. The Mediapart report has not been independently verified by The Times.
“I have never raped a woman in my life,” Mr. Abad told reporters on Monday from the Ain Department of France, where he is running for re-election in parliamentary elections in June. “Should an innocent man resign? I don’t think so.”
Mr. Abad, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that limits his ability to move his joints, said in a statement that the acts he was accused of were implausible because he did not have the physical ability to perform them and that he could not have sex without a partner’s “full and complete consent.”
Mediapart claims that one of them said that he refused a consenting encounter and the other said that she blacked after drinking with him and woke up in a hotel room, her skin sore.
The government said it had not been aware of the allegations before the Mediapart article, even though an advocacy group said it had flagged one of the women’s experiences to the two political parties involved. Mediapart was informed by both parties that they had not received the emailed correspondence.
The accusations overshadowed the first meeting of France’s freshly appointed cabinet, raising questions over whether it had ignored warnings about Mr. Abad and drawing attention away from its efforts to address soaring inflation just weeks before elections that will determine control of Parliament.
Feminist groups have been recriminating against Macron for years, accusing him of not fulfilling his vow to make women’s crimes his top priority. French feminists were particularly angry that he kept ministers who were accused of sexist behavior, or sexual violence in his cabinet.
“How many men accused of rape are we going to see appointed under this term?” the Nous Toutes collective, an umbrella group of feminist associations, said on Sunday.
French politics is increasingly concerned about sexual violence and sexism. In its annual report, the High Council for Gender Equality, a watchdog organization, stated that sexist remarks by male politicians were still commonplace. Furthermore, political parties had not yet established channels to allow victims to make accusations.
“The political world still hasn’t experienced a real #MeToo,” the council wrote.
Several candidates in the parliamentary elections have dropped out over past behavior or complaints — including a far-left politician and one from Mr. Macron’s La République en Marche party, who was defended by a top official as an “honest man” despite a domestic violence conviction.
Olivia Grégoire, the government’s new spokeswoman, faced a barrage of questions over Mr. Abad at her first post-cabinet news conference.
She said that Élisabeth Borne, Mr. Macron’s new prime minister, had discussed the accusations with Mr. Abad over the weekend, that the government had a “zero-tolerance” policy for sexual criminals, and that violence against women was “at the heart of its priorities.”
“The government will tirelessly continue to encourage the liberation of women’s speech and to encourage women who have been subjected to violence to come forward,” Ms. Grégoire said.
She also stated that Mr. Abad hadn’t been convicted, and had no legal proceedings pending against him.
“In this affair, as is often the case for these affairs, what is at stake is establishing the truth,” she said. “And establishing the truth is up to the legal system.”
Two of Mr. Macron’s top ministers — Gérald Darmanin and Éric Dupond-Moretti — had already drawn the ire of feminist groups when they were nominated in 2020. Both were reappointed this week.
Justice minister Mr. DupondMoretti has been accused of making insensitive and sexist comments, while interior minister Mr. Darmanin has been charged with rape, although prosecutors recommended that he be dropped from the investigation in January.
The accusations against Mr. Abad are from 2010 and 2011, when he was newly elected as a right-wing member to the European Parliament.
Mediapart did not give either woman’s real name. One 35-year-old woman who used to be an activist in politics told the news outlet she had met Mr. Abad at meeting in 2009 and that they started communicating regularly. Several months later, she continued to text her, some of them crude, and continued to correspond with her.
She claimed she had rejected his advances, but met him in January 2011. They had sex which was consensual at first, but she claimed that he refused not to stop when she asked.
Mediapart was informed by the woman that she first spoke with police in 2012, but that the case was dropped when she refused to press charges. Mediapart reports that she filed an official complaint in 2017 but the investigation was dropped less then a year later.
41-year old second woman said that she met Mr. Abad during a northern French wedding and has kept in touch with him professionally. He invited her to Paris for dinner and drinks in 2010. Mediapart heard her tell that Mr. Abad had offered her champagne and that she had blacked from the experience.
She later woke up in a nearby hotel room, “in a state of shock and deep disgust,” feeling groggy, her body aching, according to Mediapart. She quickly left the scene and told those close to her about her experience, but did not file any complaint.
But when she saw news reports several weeks ago that Mr. Abad was expected to enter Mr. Macron’s new government, she decided to write about her experience in a letter to the Observatory of Sexual and Sexist Violence in PoliticsThe advocacy group ‘Advocacy Group for Women’ was founded in February after almost 300 women worked in politics. It called on political parties and institutions in their midst to address sexual violence.
The woman’s May 13 letter was forwarded to La République en Marche, and Les Républicains, the conservative party Mr. Abad used to belong to — he was the head of Républicain lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament until Mr. Macron poached him for his cabinet.
Mr. Abad admitted to a consensual relationship with a woman who filed a 2017 complaint, but denied all other allegations. Top officials and politicians have claimed they didn’t know about the allegations until Mediapart reported it Saturday.
But reports since have suggested that it was an open secret among some members of Les Républicains that Mr. Abad had a reputation for behaving inappropriately with women around him.
Aurélien Pradié, the secretary general of Les Républicain, told Mediapart that Mr. Abad “always had a strange attitude with women” and that several party officials had known about the 2017 complaint but not done anything.
Fiona Texeire, a co-founder of the Observatory of Sexual and Sexist Violence in Politics, said that some women leave politics “because it is not an environment where you can work in perfect safety.”
“It’s an environment that remains extremely masculine in its practices and in its functioning,” she said, adding that it was sometimes hard for women in politics to push back against abuses of power because they might worry about tarnishing causes or parties. They also face the same struggles as other women with the legal system — approximately nine out of 10 women who experience rape never file a suit, according to official French statistics.
She said that it was crucial for the government to be an example.
“If we want things to change in French society on questions of sexual violence, the best example has to come from up top,” she said.
Source: NY Times