He is now definitively exonerated by the French justice system in this case. The Court of Cassation rejected, on Wednesday February 14, the appeal filed by Sophie Patterson-Spatz against Gérald Darmanin, whom she accuses of rape, confirming the dismissal of the case which had been decided by an investigating judge in this case in July 2022.
During the non-public hearing before the highest judicial court, the rapporteur and the advocate general concluded that the complainant’s appeal was rejected. The plaintiff had appealed to the Court of Cassation in the hope that it would order a new hearing in the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal to examine the dismissal of the case rendered in July 2022 in favor of Gérald Darmanin. Her lawyer, Me Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon, had declared to Agence France-Presse before the hearing that “Ms. Patterson expects from our highest court that the question of consent is finally treated as a question of law, and not simply as a matter of “fact”.
Sophie Patterson-Spatz, 52, has accused Mr. Darmanin of raping her in 2009 since spring 2017. At the time, she had contacted him as a project manager in the legal affairs department of the UMP (now Les Républicains), to obtain support in the review of a conviction in 2005 for blackmail and malicious calls against a former companion.
According to her, Mr. Darmanin had dangled his possible support to her during an evening in Paris via a letter to the Chancellery, and had asked for a sexual relationship in exchange. Both admit to having had sexual intercourse. But Sophie Patterson-Spatz believes she was forced to “go to the pan” when Mr. Darmanin, then aged 26, told her: “You too will have to help me”. For Me Tuaillon-Hibon, it is a “surprise rape” and an “extorted” sexual relationship, “neither free nor consensual”.
For his part, the Minister of the Interior claimed during the proceedings to have “given in to the charms” of an “enterprising” complainant. After investigations closed three times, Ms. Patterson-Spatz obtained the appointment of an investigating judge in the summer of 2020.
Mr. Darmanin was not indicted and benefited from a dismissal of the case in July 2022, which was then confirmed by the Paris Court of Appeal in January 2023. The complainant then filed this cassation appeal . The accusations made against the minister in office since 2017 have contributed to numerous feminist associations regularly calling for the resignation of Gérald Darmanin.
