For the past few days, the question posed by a high school student from Tarn to Emmanuel Macron has been repeated over and over on social networks: “You put at the head of the state men who are accused of rape and violence, why? »
An attack from which the government is struggling to divest itself, especially as new accusations affect the Minister of Solidarity, Damien Abad. Tuesday, June 14, Mediapart has published the testimony of a woman, who remained anonymous, describing an attempted rape in 2010. Others recount the behavior ” heavy “, “indecent”, “vulgar” of Mr. Abad with women. Mr. Abad denounces a “proven attempt at political destabilization” and “categorically refutes” the story of the elected centrist who accuses him.
On May 21, two other women were already accusing him in Mediapart of having violated them in 2010 and 2011. The Paris prosecutor’s office had specified that the two complaints of one had been dismissed, for “complainant’s deficiency” in 2012 and “failure of a sufficiently serious offence” in 2017. The second had not filed a complaint, and the Paris prosecutor’s office had declared not to open a preliminary investigation, the testimony remaining anonymous. The new account published on June 14 has not been followed either, to date, by the filing of a complaint.
Fuzzy case law at LRM
On the side of La République en Marche (LRM), accused of inaction in the face of these testimonies, the line of defense refers to the career of Mr. Abad: he is a recent defector from the party Les Républicains and LRM would have had no knowledge of the “rumors” who surrounded him. The party leadership is also advancing “take the subject of gender-based and sexual violence seriously” : of the “warning cells” have been set up internally for members. But in the ranks of the management of LRM, it is believed that the necessary freedom of speech for women should not be done to the detriment of the presumption of innocence.
Limit yourself to the legal response, “it is to understand nothing about the process of dealing with violence against womenjudge on the contrary Laurence Rossignol, former minister of women’s rights in the Valls government. The challenge is to share one observation with society: the majority of male aggressors go unpunished. Justice is missing out for a whole host of reasons.” For the socialist vice-president of the Senate, the political world must therefore have its own ethics: “Each party has the power to choose its candidates, each president, each prime minister has the power to choose its government: it is a discretionary power according to its own criteria. Among these criteria, there is that of moral probity and the absence of involvement in cases of violence and sexual harassment. Either we stick to justice and we know that many fall through, or we apply our own rules. »
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