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CRIME

Pressure mounts on France’s new disabilities minister to resign over rape allegations

French President Emmanuel Macron's newly appointed disabilities minister was facing mounting pressure to resign on Monday after the emergence of rape allegations from over a decade ago.

Pressure mounts on France's new disabilities minister to resign over rape allegations
French Minister for Solidarity, Autonomy and Persons with Disabilities Damien Abad. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The accusations against Damien Abad, which he denies, are a major headache for Macron and his new Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne as they seek to keep political momentum after his April presidential poll victory and ahead of June parliamentary elections.

They also come after several politicians running for parliament stepped down in recent weeks over alleged violence against women.

The appointment of Abad as minister for solidarities and people with disabilities in a reshuffle on Friday was seen as a major coup for Macron, as the 42-year-old had defected from the right wing opposition.

READ ALSO Who’s who in France’s new government 

But the next day, the Mediapart news site reported a politics watchdog group created by members of France’s MeToo movement had informed prosecutors as well as Macron’s LREM party of rape claims against Abad by two women in 2010 and 2011.

The government’s new spokeswoman Olivia Gregoire on Monday denied that Macron and his government were aware of the allegations when Abad had been appointed.

One of the women told Mediapart that in 2010 she blacked out after accepting a glass of champagne and woke up in her underwear in pain with Abad in a hotel room, and believes she may have been drugged.

She has not filed an official complaint, but prosecutors are looking into the case following a report filed by the Observatory of Sexist and Sexual Violence in Politics.

The other woman, named only as Margaux, said that her sexual encounter with Abad in 2011 began as consensual, but accuses him of then forcing anal sex on her.

The report said she informed the police in 2012 but then declined to formally make a complaint, and her subsequent claim in 2017 was later dismissed by prosecutors.

“I’m relieved that it’s come out, because I knocked on quite a few doors so that someone would do something after the case was dismissed, as I thought it was unfair,” Margaux told AFP on Sunday.

“A lot of people knew but some preferred to look away rather than ask more questions,” she added.

Abad said in a statement he contested “in the strongest way” the allegations, arguing his own disability means he is incapable of sexually assaulting anyone.

The newly appointed minister has arthrogryposis, a rare condition that affects the joints, which he says means sexual relations can only occur with the help of a partner.

The allegations overshadowed the new cabinet’s first meeting on Monday, with Gregoire facing a string of questions on the case.

“The government is with those who, following an assault or harassment, have the immense courage to speak out,” Gregoire told reporters.

She added it is up to the judicial system to establish the truth and that, to her knowledge, “no other procedure against Damien Abad is in the works”.

But politicians on the left called for his immediate resignation.

“If I were prime minister, I would tell Damien Abad: ‘I have no particular reason to believe the women are lying… While we wait for a decision from the judicial system, I wish for you not to be part of the government,'” Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure told France Inter radio.

Green politician Sandrine Rousseau also called for Abad to go.

“We need to send a loud enough message to women, that their voices count,” Rousseau told RTL radio.

Borne, herself only appointed last week in the reshuffle, said on Sunday there could be no impunity for harassment and sexual assault.

“If there is new information, if a new complaint is filed, we will draw all the consequences,” Borne said.

In 2020, Macron’s decision to appoint Gérald Darmanin as interior minister – although he was accused of rape, sexual harassment and abuse of power – drew heavy criticism, even sparking demonstrations.

Darmanin, who kept his job in the reshuffle, has denied any wrongdoing and prosecutors in January asked for the case to be dropped.

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CRIME

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Investigators cordoned off a tiny village in the French Alps on Thursday to solve the mystery of a missing toddler whose disappearance last summer gripped the nation.

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Emile, two-and-a-half, was staying with his grandparents for the first day of the summer holidays when he disappeared on July 8th last year.

Two neighbours last saw him in the late afternoon walking alone on a street in Haut-Vernet, a small settlement of 25 inhabitants at an altitude of around 1,200 metres.

The little boy, barely 90 cm (35 inches) tall, was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts and tiny hiking shoes, according to a call for witnesses at the time.

A massive on-the-ground search involving dozens of police and soldiers, sniffer dogs, a helicopter and drones failed to find him in July.

It was called off after several days following a prosecutor saying it was unlikely such a young child would have survived in the summer heat.

An initial probe into a missing person soon became a criminal investigation into a possible abduction. But the options of an accident or a fall remain open.

French investigators have summoned 17 people, including family members, neighbours and witnesses, to re-enact the events of the day he disappeared.

They are to focus on the last few minutes during which Emile was seen by neighbours, trying to untangle their contradictory accounts.

The family’s “only hope is that the child is still alive, even if this hope fades from day to day,” the grandfather’s lawyer said.

To ensure no outside interference in the investigation, police cordoned off the village from the outside world on Wednesday morning. It will remain so until Friday morning.

Flights over the village are also forbidden.

Early on Wednesday morning, around 15 journalists huddled in the cold rain at the barrier cutting off access to the village, kept at bay by two police cars.

Some 20 investigators are to guide the re-enactment of events, with some flying drones above to film it all.

The boy’s grandfather was questioned in a 1990s case into alleged violence and sexual aggression at a private Catholic school, it has emerged.

But a source close to the case said his possible involvement in the disappearance had always been examined to “the same degree” as other hypotheses.

Emile had just arrived in Haut-Vernet to stay with his mother’s parents in their holiday home for the summer when he went missing.

His parents, devout Catholics living in the southern town of La Bouilladisse, were not present on that day.

His mother is the oldest of 10 children.

Emile was her first child and she also has a younger daughter.

Investigators received some 900 calls from members of the public in the case, all of which have been dismissed as unrelated.

They have also sifted through endless mobile data and call logs in the hope of finding a clue.

In late November, a day before Emile would have turned three, his parents published a call for answers in a Christian weekly.

“Tell us where he is,” they wrote.

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