PARIS – Prosecutors said yesterday they had opened a formal investigation into under-pressure French cabinet minister Damien Abad, after a woman accused him of attempted rape at a party in 2010.
The plaintiff is believed to be the former head of the youth wing of the Nouveau Centre (New Centrist) party, who told the Mediapart website earlier this month that Abad had assaulted her.
The solidarity and social cohesion minister, a high-profile recruit to President Emmanuel Macron’s government last month, has been accused of abuse by three separate women.
Abad, who suffers from arthrogryposis, a rare condition that affects the joints, denies the allegations and has vowed to sue the woman behind the Mediapart article, who was not named by the news organisation.
Allegations against the 42-year-old in the run-up to parliamentary elections earlier in June were seen as one of several factors that led to Macron’s MPs losing their majority.
The president was criticised by a schoolgirl, while in southern France on June 6, who asked him why he “put men at the head of state who are accused of rape and violence against women”.
Abad, the first handicapped MP when elected in 2012, has previously ruled out resigning, saying “should an innocent man resign? I don’t think so”.
He was convincingly re-elected from his constituency in the Ain region of eastern France in this month’s election.
One of Abad’s accusers says that she had blacked out after accepting a glass of champagne and woke up in her underwear in pain with Abad in a hotel room.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin is also the subject of a rape complaint filed in 2017.
He denied any wrongdoing and prosecutors in January asked for the case to be dropped. – AFP, June 30, 2022
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