Already accused of sexual violence, Damien Abad is the subject of a new accusation by a woman testifying to an attempted rape.
The Minister of Solidarity, Damien Abad, already implicated for sexual violence, is targeted by new accusations from a woman who says she suffered an attempted rape in 2010, according to her story published Tuesday by Mediapart.
Mr. Abad, who is seeking a new mandate as deputy on Sunday in Ain, denounced to AFP the “carefully chosen calendar of these publications” and the “partiality” of the Mediapart investigation, which according to him has a political motivation. “As for the allegations reported, they revolt me and I categorically refute them,” added Mr. Abad in a message sent to AFP.
“Laëtitia” (assumed name), a “elected centrist”, accuses Mr. Abad of having tried to rape her during a party organized at his home in Paris in the first half of 2010. Without explicitly mentioning a complaint, his lawyer, Me Raphaële Bialkiewicz, told Mediapart that she was proceeding “to the collection and cross-checking of elements, with a view to providing all the necessary follow-ups”.
Laëtitia says that, on the evening of the events, Damien Abad “offered her a glass” at the bottom of which she saw “something”: suspicious, she went to spit her sip into the toilet.
Still according to this woman’s account, Mr. Abad was waiting for her behind the door at the exit of the toilets and everything went “very quickly”: the MEP would have “pushed her into a room opposite”, then would have tried to force her to perform fellatio.
“I was scared, I was flabbergasted. I struggled, I hit him in the stomach,” she says.
Two previous charges
“Laëtitia” says she was finally able to “get rid of” her alleged attacker and leave the room thanks to the irruption of a guest.
The facts reported by this woman are “supported by the testimonies of eight people, to whom she confided or who may have witnessed certain elements of her story”, and whom Mediapart claims to have contacted.
These accusations come after those published by the online media on May 20, the day after Mr. Abad’s appointment as Minister of Solidarity, Autonomy and Disabled People: two women, quoted by Mediapart, accused the new minister of raping them in 2010 and 2011.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, one of them – who confirmed her story to AFP – filed a complaint twice, but these two complaints were dismissed in 2012, then in 2017, first for “lack of the complainant”, then “lack of sufficiently serious infringement”.
As for the other accuser, her testimony was transmitted to justice by the Observatory of sexist and sexual violence, but the prosecution announced on May 25 that it was not opening a preliminary investigation “as it stands. “on these accusations, for lack of” any element allowing the identification of the victim”.