Justice opened in May a preliminary investigation for rape and sexual assault targeting Jean Lassalle, former candidate for the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022, Le Monde learned on Friday July 21, confirming information from BFM-TV.
This investigation concerns “on old facts [2010] and for the time being unconfirmed”, said the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office, specifying that “the investigations are continuing”. The former deputy for Pyrénées-Atlantiques “should be heard quickly (…) on these accusations”, continues the court.
Contacted by Le Monde, Jean Lassalle has not yet responded to our request. With Agence France-Presse, his entourage declared that he had “discovered this affair on BFM-TV”. “He was totally unaware and doesn’t remember this person. He does not see who it is,” said the spokesperson for the former elected official and his political movement Résistons, Pierre Claret.
According to information from BFM-TV, the complaint was filed by an activist who participated in Jean Lassalle’s 2010 regional election campaign, for which the latter was head of the MoDem list in Aquitaine. The activist accuses him of having raped her in a Bordeaux hotel where she had gone at the invitation of the candidate, armed with posters and her pot of glue, thinking of attending a team meeting.
With BFM-TV, the activist, now 45, explains that she filed a complaint in April, because she “realized that [she was] badly for twelve years because of that”, to the point of being led “to make a suicide attempt”. “I wanted to file a complaint to denounce the facts, to ensure that he does not cause other victims and to close this parenthesis,” she continues. She has since been heard by the investigators, confirms a judicial source, who specifies that “this is the first case concerning Mr. Lassalle in [the] jurisdiction [of Bordeaux]”.
First charges in 2017
The Béarn elected official had already been implicated on Twitter in 2017, in the context of testimonies shared with the hashtag
“Justice is finally on the way, reacted on Twitter one of those who then spoke, the journalist Mié Kohiyama. All my thoughts to [Communist Party communications director] Julia Castanier and [former elected socialist] Colette Capdevielle who spoke with me to denounce the actions of Jean Lassalle. »
After expressing her support for the complainant, Julia Castanier, for her part, regretted “[the] unbearable indulgence [from which Jean Lassalle had benefited since 2017] justified by a reduction of the facts or a relativization linked [to his] gognenard and “sympathetic” character (…). For years, Mr. Lassalle has been unconcerned about anything, invited everywhere to put himself on the stage. (…). How many more victims will it take for this complacency to end forever? The former deputy is in the cast of the second season of the investigation game “Les Traitors”, broadcast since July 12 on M6.
