Monday, May 23, Damien Abad spoke in Saint-Jean-le-Vieux (Ain) on the rape charges against him. “I contest the accusations with the greatest firmness,” repeated the minister, during a quick press conference. “All my sexual encounters have always been mutually consensual. I have never raped any woman,” he added, citing “a deep wound” for him and those around him.

Candidate for his re-election in the 5th district of Ain, Damien Abad intends to devote himself “to his mission as minister” and to his legislative campaign. “Should an innocent man resign? I don’t think so,” he said, again mentioning his disability which he said prevented him from committing the acts of which two women accuse him.

This complaint resurfaces at every key political moment in my life.

Just appointed, the new Minister of Solidarity is facing accusations of rape revealed by Mediapart, which he contested “with the greatest force”. Two women, whose testimony the newspaper collected, accuse Damien Abad, 42, of rape in 2010 and 2011. One of them filed a complaint in 2017. His complaint was dismissed. With Le Figaro, Damien Abad deemed this case “unfair”. “Living what I’m going through is very difficult and frankly it’s all really low,” he said Monday after his first cabinet meeting. “This complaint resurfaces at every key political moment in my life. This was the case at the time of the presidential election when I supported François Fillon of the group, some then agitated it at the time of the presidency of the group and, as luck would have it, it returns during the transfer of powers to the ministry, “said he denounced, contesting the alleged facts.

According to the testimonies collected by Mediapart, one of the two women, aged 41, denounced facts which allegedly took place during a party in the fall of 2010. Damien Abad allegedly offered her a glass of champagne in a bar in Paris. “And there, total blackout, until the next morning”, testifies this woman, who says she woke up with him “in a hotel room near the bar”, in her underwear, in “state of shock and deep disgust”. She shares her feelings that she may have been “drugged”. The other woman, Margaux, testifies to facts that allegedly took place in early 2011. After meeting Damien Abad in 2009, when she was vice-president of the Young Democrats in Paris, then after being “dragged up by text “, she would have found him one evening in Paris and they would have had a sexual relationship first consented then forced, marked “of disrespect, of injunction and of insistence”.