Ex-minister charged with rape

A former French minister and mayor with the ruling party has been charged with rape after accusations he sexually assaulted women working for him at city hall, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Published: 23 June 2011 14:08 CEST

Georges Tron, formerly a junior civil service minister from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, is facing charges of rape and sexual assault by “a person in authority”, prosecutor Marie-Suzanne Le Queau said after he appeared before judges in a court in Evry, outside Paris.

Tron was released on bail. The crimes are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Tron, 53, was arrested on Monday following allegations that he sexually assaulted women who worked in the town hall in Draveil, south of Paris, where he is mayor.

Two women who worked with him at city hall filed complaints against Tron while a third, a former parliamentary aide, has appeared as a witness and also made accusations, but has not made a formal complaint.

His assistant for culture at the mayor’s office, Brigitte Gruel, was also charged with rape and sexual assault and given a conditional release.

Le Queau said Tron had denied having “any relations of a sexual nature with the victims, even relations that would have been consensual.”

She said, however, that statements from the two plaintiffs, aged 34 and 36, were “coherent” and “corroborated on some points by outside elements.”

Tron’s lawyer Olivier Schnerb said the conditions for his release include that he is not allowed to meet with any of his accusers.

He said Tron insisted on his innocence and is convinced he will be acquitted. Being charged, Schnerb said, “has never made anyone guilty”.

The two plaintiffs alleged that Tron forced them to let him give them foot massages, which turned into forced sexual encounters.

Tron’s resignation from the government on May 29 came amid a wave of soul-searching over sex and secrecy in public life after the French IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York on sex crime charges.

Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the global lender after his arrest.

Tron alleged his political rivals were trying to gain momentum from the arrest of Strauss-Kahn.

France has in recent weeks been shaken by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party has accused Attal of not doing enough on security as the anti-immigration party soars ahead of the government coalition in polls for the June 9th election.

Speaking in Viry-Chatillon, the town where Shemseddine was killed, Attal condemned the “addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”, calling for “a real surge of authority… to curb violence”.

“There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault cases, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he said.

Measures will include expanding compulsory school attendance to all the days of the week from 8am to 6pm for children of collège age (11 to 15).

“In the day the place to be is at school, to work and to learn,” said Attal, who was also marking 100 days in office since being appointed in January by President Emmanuel Macron to turn round the government’s fortunes.

Parents needed to take more responsibility, said Attal, warning that particularly disruptive children would have sanctions marked on their final grades.

OPINION: No, France is not suffering an unprecedented wave of violence

Promoting an old-fashioned back-to-basics approach to school authority, he said “You break something – you repair it. You make a mess – you clear it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect.”

Attal also floated the possibility of children in exceptional cases being denied the right to special treatment on account of their minority in legal cases.

Thus 16-year-olds could be forced to immediately appear in court after violations “like adults”, he said. In France, the age of majority is 18, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Macron and Attal face an uphill struggle to reverse the tide ahead of the European elections. Current polls point to the risk of a major debacle that would overshadow the rest of the president’s second mandate up to 2027.

A poll this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed the RN on 32.5 percent with the government coalition way behind on 18 percent.