One of President Macron’s key ministers is under police investigation after a woman claimed that he forced her to have sex in return for help to resolve a legal problem.
Gérald Darmanin, 35, the budget minister and a former conservative MP, said that he was the victim of malicious false allegations after Sophie Spatz, described by French media as a former call girl, lodged a complaint with police over an incident in 2009.
Mr Macron’s administration gave its full support to Mr Darmanin, the first member of the cabinet to be accused of sexual misconduct since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke.
Ms Spatz, 46, claimed that Mr Darmanin demanded sex in return for helping to expunge a conviction for blackmail from her criminal record. Mr Darmanin was a 28-year-old adviser in judicial affairs in the conservative Republicans party at the time.
Ms Spatz told police that Mr Darmanin took her to dinner in Les Chandelles, a sex club, and then to a hotel room. She consented to sex because it was the price for his help in her legal case, her lawyer said. The minister’s lawyer claimed that Ms Spatz was simply trying to blacken Mr Darmanin’s name.
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Mr Macron and his centrist administration have pledged no tolerance for sexual abuse and harassment and they were critical this month of a manifesto, signed by 100 women including the actress Catherine Deneuve, which claimed that men were being persecuted in an offensive by “new puritans”.
“These acts constitute rape,” said Ms Tuaillon-Hibon, who specialises in sex crimes. “There was no desire, enticement or consent on the part of my client. She finished by giving in to him because there was something at stake for her as important as an arm or a leg — her innocence under the law.”
Ms Spatz first went to police last year when Mr Darmanin entered the government as one of Mr Macron’s main catches from the conservative party, along with Edouard Philippe, the prime minister and Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister. Prosecutors initially dropped the case because Ms Spatz failed to respond to a summons for questioning by an investigating judge. She renewed the complaint this month, triggering an automatic re-opening of the case.
Last year, Mr Darmanin played down Ms Spatz’s allegations, which were circulating on social media, as fantasy, but acknowledged that he had perhaps misbehaved.
“I was nothing, I was a young man,” he said. He had sometimes been “a little heavy” in his relations with women, he said.
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Ms Spatz’s lawyer said that her client was not seeking vengeance but wanted justice because she had been forced to have sex. “There was no physical force. That’s not the question. Ms Spatz found herself a hostage, with extremely strong moral pressure which consisted of him saying, ‘If you want your innocence back, it’s like this...”
Ms Spatz was questioned by police for eight hours last week. She handed over copies of text messages from 2009 to 2012 with Mr Darmanin.
Exasperated in one message, quoted by Le Monde newspaper, she wrote to Mr Darmanin: “When you know the effort I had to make to sleep with you!!! To take care of my case.” He replied, “You’re right. I’m no doubt a dirty bastard. How to make you forgive me?”