In September 2021, Senator Esther Benbassa was excluded from the Ecologists group in the Senate. And for good reason, a first survey of Mediapart revealed that more than a dozen former employees and students denounced moral harassment on the part of the elected official. On Wednesday, the office of the upper house of parliament considered that these accusations had “not been established”.
However, a new survey by pure player contradicts the conclusions of the Senate office. In an article published on Wednesday, our colleagues were able to speak with another collaborator, who in the past filed two handrails against the senator.
Homophobic remarks, humiliations, threats…
Astrid, the pseudonym given by Mediapart to this source who wishes to remain anonymous, 28 years old, has been working since 2020 with the chosen one. In February, this parliamentary collaborator seized the “reception and listening cell” for victims of harassment.
In her story, the young woman accuses Esther Benbassa of numerous lesbophobic insinuations. “She boasted to my colleague of having hired ‘her first lesbian’ but ‘from a good family’. I was therefore the ‘Catholic lesbian’”, explains Astrid in particular in her letter to the office of the Senate. The collaborator also regrets being paid with a salary “less important than that presented in the job offer” and lower than her “male colleagues”.
She also accuses the senator of sending “denigrating collective emails”, “remarks on the physical” and “screams”. The culmination of this “moral harassment” took place on November 8, 2022. That day, Esther Benbassa would have physically threatened Astrid. The latter had filed a handrail at the end of this altercation.
Since February 28, Astrid no longer works with the senator. With AFP, the senator was pleased to have been “cleared” by the office of the Senate and continues to deny all the facts of which she has been accused for two years.