The decision can still be appealed, but the chances of reopening the file seem very slim. On Friday July 8, an investigating judge at the Paris court issued a dismissal order in favor of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, after five years of proceedings in a rape complaint case – information revealed Monday by BFM-TV.
“Justice affirms that no reprehensible act can be blamed on Mr. Gérald Darmanin, announced the lawyers of the Minister of the Interior, Mare Mathias Chichportich and Pierre-Olivier Sur. Two decisions of classification without follow-up then two orders of dismissal intervened under the authority of four different magistrates, including two investigating judges. »
The alleged facts date back to March 17, 2009. On that day, Sophie Patterson-Spatz, a former call girl, came into contact with Gérald Darmanin, then in charge of legal affairs at the Union for a Popular Movement (a party that has since become Les Republicans). The young woman, criminally convicted several times between 2003 and 2005 for “blackmail”, “malicious telephone calls” and “threat of crime”, says she is seeking to obtain a review of one of these criminal sanctions, pronounced in 2004. After having explained her case to him, she assures us that Mr. Darmanin would have promised her his intercession in exchange for sexual favors. She would have given in – getting nothing.
Procedural Battle
Eight years after the events, Mr.me Patterson-Spatz had decided to take legal action, believing that he had been the victim of rape, acts of sexual harassment and breach of trust. A first complaint, filed in June 2017, had been dismissed, before a second, in January 2018, suffered the same fate. In March of the same year, an examining magistrate received a third complaint, this time with a civil action, which she refused to investigate.
After a procedural battle which had seen the Court of Cassation, then the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, look into the file, justice had decided to reopen the file on June 9, 2020, less than a month before the appointment of Gérald Darmanin, then Minister of Public Accounts, Place Beauvau. Several judicial sources had affirmed, at the time, that such a decision had not been taken because of new elements added to the file, but because the investigating judge had dispensed with carrying out the slightest act of investigation. and had not conducted any auditions. The announcement of his continuation in government had provoked controversy and demonstrations, organized in particular by feminist movements and associations.
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