CAROLINE BLUMBERG via AFP
POLITICS – Emmanuel Macron had been strongly challengedduring a trip to Gaillac in the Tarn this Thursday, June 9 by a young woman about two ministers accused of rape.
“You put at the head of the state men who are accused of rape and violence against women, why?”, had launched this one, during a walkabout of the president.
The head of state stopped the procession and got out of the car to meet several dozen residents posted behind a barrier. The liberation of speech, “I accompanied it and I will continue to accompany it, to protect it. At the same time, to function in society you must have the presumption of innocence,” he replied.
The next morning, this Friday, Laura, aged 18, was surprised to receive a visit from the gendarmes in her high school. “They interrogated me for 10 minutes. I held the President’s hand until he answered me. We’re not going to make a story out of it. It was perhaps not the place for my intervention, but it was the occasion”, she tells the site of The Dispatch.
“I am a feminist. I have nothing against Macron. I think he did good things in a difficult situation with the health crisis. But for National Education, on violence against women, I find that it was not good”, she explains again. “If I could redo it, I would”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, during the dissemination of the information, hastened to condemn the sending of the gendarmes to the school. “Macron sent the gendarmerie to the school to lecture the young woman who arrested him. It promises for his great blah-blah. You say yes or the gendarmes arrive”, he commented on Twitter.
On its Facebook page, the gendarmerie wanted to justify and apologize overnight. “The action of the Tarn gendarmerie is criticized in its approach initiated this morning to go to the young girl who had drawn the attention of the President of the Republic to violence against women. Our action simply aimed to take into account this person, who had presented himself as a victim, to offer him to collect a possible complaint, or failing that to offer him help, support or a relay to meet local associations to bring him assistance”, we write.
“We would like to apologize to her if our approach to meeting her at school to exchange was badly perceived and that she considers that we were clumsy. We obviously remain at his disposal and at his disposal”, concludes the gendarmerie.
Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, had been the subject of a rape complaint, first dismissed, then relaunched and for which the prosecution requested a dismissal in early 2022.
Freshly appointed Minister of Solidarity, Damien Abad is accused of sexual violence, following a letter from the Observatory of sexist and sexual violence, an association created in February, in the wake of the MeToo movement.
See also on The HuffPost: These caregivers are fed up with the bla-bla in the face of the hospital crisis