It is a particularly sensitive file which will be examined, this Tuesday morning, by the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal. The three magistrates who compose it – a president of the chamber and two advisers – will examine, at 10:30 a.m., Sophie Patterson-Spatz’s appeal against the dismissal pronounced this summer in favor of Gérald Darmanin, whom she has publicly accused, since 2017 , rape. The affair is worth to the Minister of the Interior to be reviled by many feminist voices, who consider his presence in Place Beauvau to be abnormal. As recently as Friday, in Nice, messages of support for the complainant were stuck on the windows of a bookstore located opposite a police station that Gérald Darmanin had come to present.
The case dates back to March 2009. At the time, Sophie Patterson-Spatz, now 50, had contacted the person who was then in charge of the legal affairs department of the UMP, the ancestor of LR . She asked him for support for the review of a 2005 conviction for blackmail and malicious calls against an ex-companion. According to the elements of the investigation collected by AFP, Gérald Darmanin would have invited her a few days later to dinner. He would then have insisted that she accompany him to a swingers’ club and finally to a hotel, making him dangle his possible support, via a letter that he undertook to write to the Chancellery.
“You’re right, I’m probably a badass”
The Complainant and the Minister both acknowledge a sexual relationship. But Sophie Patterson-Spatz believes she was forced to “go to the pan” with the former mayor of Tourcoing, feeling “held hostage” when the latter, then 26 years old, told her: “You too, you will have to help me”. For his part, the Minister of the Interior claims to have “given in to the charms” of an “enterprising” complainant. After having “hidden the facts” for several years, Sophie Patterson-Spatz would have “suffocated” in May 2017, at the announcement of the arrival of Gérald Darmanin in the government of Edouard Philippe. She then files a complaint for rape.
The investigation was closed three times by the prosecution, then by an investigating magistrate. After long procedural disputes, a new investigating judge places Gérald Darmanin under the intermediate status of assisted witness at the end of 2020 and confronts him for nine hours with the complainant at the beginning of 2021. Key element of the file: a nighttime SMS from Sophie Patterson-Spatz nine months after the litigious evening: “Abuse of his position. For my part, it’s being a dirty con (…) When you know the effort it took me to fuck with you. To take care of my case”. To which Gérald Darmanin replied: “You’re right, I’m probably a dirty prick. How to forgive myself ? »
A sexual relationship “neither free nor consented”
In her dismissal order last July, the magistrate notes that “the sincerity of the statements” of Sophie Patterson-Spatz as to a rape “cannot be called into question”, but “she deliberately chose to have a relationship sex with him in order to have his criminal case retried”. According to the decision, Gérald Darmanin “could legitimately be mistaken about the intentions” of the complainant, even if in the famous SMS, “he implicitly admits that he was able to take advantage of the situation”. Still, “the law is not to be confused with morality”, still decides the judge: Sophie Patterson-Spatz was according to her “consenting under the law”.
The public prosecutor’s office requested confirmation of the dismissal, dismissing “the hypothesis of false or malicious accusations” of Sophie Patterson-Spatz, but considering that “it cannot be considered that (she) did not consent to the sexual act solely because of its motivation”.
For Me Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon, the consent of her client “is not established and its validity even less”. She evokes a “surprise rape” and an “extorted” sexual relationship, “neither free nor consented”. Gérald Darmanin must, according to her, “be indicted and referred to a trial court” and “finally treated like any lambda questioned”.
Complaint for slanderous denunciation
The Minister of the Interior filed a complaint for slanderous denunciation. Contacted by AFP, his lawyers declined to comment. “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 young man’s life “, he had justified in July 2020 to the newspaper The voice of the North. A resident of Tourcoing (North) had also accused Gérald Darmanin of having forced her to have sex in exchange for housing and a job. The investigation was closed in 2018.