Here are the details of the accusation of rape once morest the French Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin who benefited in July from a dismissal, challenged Tuesday on appeal, according to investigation elements obtained by AFP.
The evening of 2009
In March 2009, Sophie Patterson-Spatz, 37, went to the UMP (which has since become LR) of which she is a member, seeking support for the review of a 2005 conviction for blackmail and malicious calls to an ex-companion .
Gérald Darmanin, 26, in charge of legal affairs, promises to “to inform”. They have dinner together a few days later, then go to the Parisian libertine club “Candles“, then in a hotel where they have a sexual relationship.
After this evening, Gérald Darmanin insists on seeing Ms. Patterson-Spatz once more who urgently requests a copy of a “letter” in support of the request for review of her conviction.
Occult the facts
Once the Chancellery’s response was received in 2010, the exchanges practically ceased. The plaintiff recounts having “concealed the facts“the following years, having “not aware that (she) had been raped”. The complaint and the procedural battle
Mme Patterson-Spatz “explode” when Gérald Darmanin became minister in 2017. She then filed a complaint for “rape”. He revealed the accusation himself on the radio on January 15, 2018. Twice, the prosecution closed the investigation, first because Ms. Patterson-Spatz did not respond to the summons, then because he considered not established his lack of consent.
In 2018, she requested the appointment of an investigating judge.
A first magistrate refuses to resume the investigations, considering the preliminary investigation sufficient. It is contradicted by the Paris Court of Appeal following two years of procedural battle. A new judge, appointed in mid-2020, dismissed the case last July, considering that Ms. Patterson-Spatz “deliberately chose to have a sexual relationship with Mr. Darmanin in order to have his criminal case retried”. The dismissal is challenged on appeal on Tuesday.
What the complainant says
To revise her 2005 conviction, which “rotted (her) life”, Ms. Patterson-Spatz contacted many people, including the UMP, where she met Mr. Darmanin. According to her, the chosen one then invites her to the restaurant, which she accepts to plead her case. During dinner, he would have promised his help, then would have “taken her hand”, adding: “Me too, you will have to help me”.
She says she then felt “held hostage” and “forced” to follow him to the libertine club, then to a hotel.
When he goes away for half an hour to pick up beauty products at her request, she doesn’t leave. “I should never have found myself in this situation. There it was over. I failed to move and leave,” says Ms Patterson-Spatz during the March 2021 confrontation. In her expression, she “goes to the pan” then, even though Gérald Darmanin “understood at all stages that I did not want him”. Her ex-husband and his best friend testified that she would have immediately indicated to them that she felt “obligated” to have this sexual relationship.
Key exchange of the file, Ms. Patterson-Spatz wrote to Gérald Darmanin this SMS nine months following the facts: “To abuse one’s position. For my part, it is to be a dirty idiot (…). When you know the effort that it took me to fuck with you. To take care of my file”. “You’re right, I’m probably a jerk. How to forgive myself?”he replies.
“Send me the letters” concerning the revision, claims Ms. Patterson-Spatz, who has already denounced the facts to the UMP.
What Gérald Darmanin says
During the March 2021 confrontation, Mr. Darmanin assures that it was Ms. Patterson-Spatz who “made advances” to him from dinner, which “excited” him. Between 2018 and 2021, he puts forward three different explanations for his famous SMS where he concedes to being “probably a dirty con”: “She explained to me that she had cheated on her husband”, he justifies first. “I’m talking regarding cheating on my fiancée,” he said next. Then during the confrontation in 2021, by the fact that he did not “send in real time” the requested letter.
Another potential contradiction, Mr. Darmanin confirms having requested an appointment at the Chancellery, even a “serious study” of the complainant’s file, but explains that it “is not an intervention”. In confrontation, Ms. Patterson-Spatz’s lawyers question the minister: “Have you ever had sex with women for whom you might have intervened?”. “Yes, especially with my current wife,” he replies. “You still have to measure what it is to be wrongly accused, of having to explain to your parents what happened because, it’s true, I had a life as a young man”, a- he said in July.
Mr. Darmanin was also targeted by an investigation for “abuse of weakness”, closed without further action in 2018. A resident of Tourcoing (North) had accused his ex-mayor of having requested sexual favors for accommodation.
