The Ministry of the Interior is not rid of its “case”. After a dismissal Friday in favor of Gérald Darmanin of a complaint for rape, the plaintiff Sophie Patterson-Spatz announces this Wednesday through her lawyer to appeal. “Far from any relentlessness or any revenge, Sophie Patterson-Spatz simply wants to finally obtain justice and strongly contests the merits of this order. She therefore instructed my firm to appeal, which was done today, ”wrote Me Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon in a press release.
Since his appointment in the summer of 2020 to the Interior, and again during his recent renewal, this file of sexual violence has indeed been a political burden for Gérald Darmanin, considered in particular by feminist voices as illegitimate in his place.
Sophie Patterson-Spatz, 50, has accused, since 2017, the Beauvau tenant of rape, sexual harassment and breach of trust, for facts which allegedly occurred in Paris in 2009 and which allegedly started at the headquarters of the UMP, ancestor from LR. The complainant had contacted the elected official, then in charge of the party’s legal affairs department, to obtain support when she wanted to have a 2004 conviction for blackmail and malicious calls against a ex-companion.
Abuse of power ?
According to her, Gérald Darmanin would have made her dangle during a dinner and then an evening in a Parisian swingers’ club his possible support, via a letter that he undertook to write to the Chancellery, asking her in exchange a sexual relationship. According to her account before the investigators, Sophie Patterson-Spatz had no desire for this sexual relationship, would have “panicked”, but would have felt compelled to “go to the pan”, having “no choice”.
Key exchange of the file, on the night of December 17, 2009, several months after the denounced facts, Sophie Patterson-Spatz wrote him this SMS: “Abuse of his position. For my part, it is to be a dirty con (…). When you know the effort it took me to fuck with you. To take care of my case. Less than two hours later, he replies: “You’re right, I’m probably a dirty prick. How to forgive myself ? »
After having, according to her account, “hidden the facts” for several years, Sophie Patterson-Spatz was “suffocated” at the announcement of the arrival of Gérald Darmanin in the government of Édouard Philippe, in June 2017. After having reanalyzed this episode as a rape, she then files a complaint. The investigation had been closed twice by the prosecution.
A complaint for slanderous denunciation
The minister filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation. This complaint “follows its course”, according to the lawyers. “You still have to measure what it’s like to be wrongly accused, to have to explain to your parents what happened because, it’s true, I had a life as a young man “, had justified the minister in July 2020 to the newspaper La Voix du Nord.
Gérald Darmanin was the subject of another comparable procedure, also filed in 2018: he had been accused of abuse of weakness by a resident of Tourcoing (North) who claimed to have been forced into sexual relations in exchange for a housing and employment.