Adrien Quatennens looks back on his slap: “I learned, I worked, I understood”

For his media return, the rebellious MP Adrien Quatennens makes his mea culpa after his conviction for domestic violence recognizing his “errors” and ensuring that he has “improved”.

A mea culpa for his media return. More than a year after his conviction for domestic violence against his ex-wife, with whom he was divorcing at the time, and his return to the National Assembly, Adrien Quatennens declared “regret” for having “raised his hand” against his former wife. “This gesture must not be minimized or trivialized” repeated the deputy from the North on the set of France 2this Wednesday, February 7, after a long absence in the media.

Rehabilitated by his group La France insoumise which he joined on the benches of the Assembly on April 11, 2023, after having sat for four months as a non-registered elected official, Adrien Quatennens has yet to show his credentials publicly. These latest comments in the media, at the end of 2023, after the revelations about the slap he had given his wife a few years earlier had not been well received. The man denounced a “media lynching” in the Voice of the North and had attempted to contextualize his act evoking on BFMTV a relationship that was “not violent” but “difficult for about two years” as well as a “serious argument with mutual threats.” A year later, the MP assures that “a slap is not acceptable and that no context justifies it”.

“We can make mistakes and improve”

Adrien Quatennens admitted to having two regrets after this affair, but not so much on the consequences it had on his political career. “What I regret is having one day raised my hand. What I also regret is having misunderstood that certain words in my defense were poorly chosen, today I would not say them again” , indicated the elected official. As for his four-month suspended prison sentence, he does not comment on it, simply recalling that he “did not contest it”. Once the sentence has been served, he now believes he can move forward, even advance the debate on the subject of domestic violence.

“We can make mistakes, regret them […] and improve. There is a course that I followed and I hope that it can be followed by all the people concerned”, insisted Adrien Quatennens in reference to the awareness course on intra-family violence that he followed. La France insoumise had conditioned the return of the deputy to his ranks following this internship which “helped a lot” the man by his own admission. “I learned, I worked, I understood” assured the person close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon even explains that he “understood what feminists say when they say that in violence there is a form of continuum, something progressive”. And the rebel adds in a more political tone this time that “if we we want to eradicate this violence, then we must eradicate certain mechanisms which are internalized, in particular sexist mechanisms”. A task which he intends to tackle in the Assembly? The future will tell.