DAMIEN ABAD. Damien Abad publicly returns to his disease, arthrogryposis, and assures that this handicap prevents him “materially” from sexually assaulting a person while two women accuse him of rape.
[Mis à jour le 21 mai 2022 à 17h31] “I have always avoided putting my disability forward”. Damien Abad, however, made a departure from this principle. The Minister of Solidarity, appointed to the Borne government on May 20, is accused of sexual assault by two women and disputes “with the greatest firmness” the facts attributed to him. The accusations against the former president of the Republican group in the National Assembly were revealed in an investigation by Mediapart published on May 21. The deputy of Ain denies and defends himself, he advances in particular his handicap, caused by arthrogryposis, a rare congenital disease, as proof of his inability to force a woman to have sexual intercourse without consent. A highlighting of his illness that Damien Abad considers necessary and which pushes him to “reveal [son] privacy in detail by explaining that the facts which [lui] are charged are materially impossible”, he declared on May 23 during a short press conference in Ain.
“You will understand that addressing these subjects publicly is extremely painful for me,” said the politician, referring to his statement also published in Mediapart following the testimony of the two accusers. He explains that it is “physically impossible for him to commit the acts described” in the testimony of the complainants. “In my position, the sexual act can only occur with the assistance and benevolence of my partner. […] In addition, I am unable to carry a person, transport them and undress them”, detailed the minister. His disability and the only argument of defense opposed by the minister who insisted on May 23: “I don’t ‘have never raped a single woman in my life’. A former caregiver for Damien Abad supports the MP’s statements in testimony about RMC, according to her, with his illness the forties is not able to act as described by the two women. Before these accusations of sexual assault came to light, Damien Abad showed maximum discretion about his illness.
Damien Abad’s former caregiver testifies in his favor
Damien Abad defends himself alone against the rape charges. The explanations according to which the minister’s handicap would prevent him from committing the acts of which he is accused find an echo in the testimony of a former caregiver of the deputy of Ain published this Tuesday, May 24 on RMC. “I have a hard time believing” the accusations said the one who took care of Damien Abad for four years. She details the capacities of the 42-year-old man and especially their limits: “He needs the arms of others. […] He can’t undo anything. Maintain a person, he cannot.” In view of these elements, the health professional finds it difficult for the politician to force a person to have intimate relations. “In my opinion, the person must consent to have sex with him. You must have to help him. I don’t see how he can proceed, how he can undress her. It is impossible that he could have done this alone“, she continues in the columns of the media.
According to this theory, the testimony of the two accusers is called into question but far from the caregiver the idea of discrediting the words of the two women: “I do not question the words of these girls, assures Muriel. way, there’s no smoke without fire. But I’m not the only one who knows what he can or can’t do.”
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Damien Abad suffers from a rare congenital disease called “arthrogryposis”. This disease, known as “fetal immobility syndrome”, causes neurological abnormalities even before birth and manifests itself in a series of muscular problems in the four limbs. The consequences can also be skeletal or visceral. If birth mortality is high, a patient’s lifespan can then be normal, but often with severe handicaps.
“I have always made sure that it is neither a brake nor a driving force in politics” (Damien Abad about his disability in Le Parisien, in January 2020)
Damien Abad will be the first elected representative of the Fifth Republic to carry such a visible handicap. The president of the LR group in the Assembly until 2022 is, in this sense, one of the rare personalities to embody the inclusion of people with physical disabilities in the political world in France. However, the new minister rarely speaks on this subject. Last January, without mentioning his personal case, he asked for a “public apology” from Eric Zemmour, who had castigated “the obsession with the inclusion” of children with disabilities in schools, believing that their place was in “establishments specialist”. In the columns of Figaro, Damien Abad denounced “an intolerable step back” and “a stab” for “all the families who fight daily for the integration of their children”.
We have to go back to a January 2020 interview with Le Parisien to see Damien Abad talk about his illness: “I have always made sure that it is neither a brake nor a driving force in politics”, he said then. “The very first time you come to a market, to distribute leaflets, that’s when it’s the most difficult.”
This handicap of Damien Abad was explicitly mentioned by the two women who accused him of sexual assault. The two complainants assured Médiapart that Damien Abad would have used this handicap to make them feel guilty: “I am now convinced that he is using his handicap to inspire pity, that he was perfectly aware of not respecting my consent”, explained one of them. “I would have fired anyone but Damien had a disability” she said again, claiming not to have wanted to “hurt” him at the time of the alleged facts. The other plaintiff, too, explains that Damien Abad’s disability prevented her from pushing him away: “I never packed him up, shoved him too much or rushed him, including the day after the events, because we didn’t Don’t do that with someone with a disability.”
Damien Abad was appointed Minister of Solidarity, Autonomy and People with Disabilities by Emmanuel Macron on May 20, 2022. A position where he should be very exposed to the media. The former president of the group The Republicans in the Assembly has thereby passed into the government and therefore into the majority. The result of a process of several weeks. Only a few days after the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, Le Figaro had indeed revealed a meeting at the Elysee Palace between Damien Abad and Thierry Solère, political adviser to the Head of State, known for recruiting new supporters on the right. A meeting which remained “of the order of the exchange of views”, assured his entourage to AFP. But the news, which fell in the middle of the LR strategic council, on April 26, had cast a chill. Especially since, during this meeting, Damien Abad had chosen to abstain on the vote on the motion declaring the “independence” of the party from the Macronist bloc and from any other force in the National Assembly.
“This ‘ni-ni’ does not suit me. I know how to tell the difference between Emmanuel Macron and the extremes”, then justified Damien Abad, questioned about his abstention by Le Figaro. Under pressure from many LR executives for his displayed closeness to the majority since then, the elected official finally announced that he was leaving the presidency of the LR group in the National Assembly and that he was going “on leave” from his party. A decision taken within 24 hours of his appointment to the government.
“I remain a right-wing man, but I no longer recognize myself in LR’s approach” (Damien Abad at Figaro)
Damien Abad explained it again in the columns of Figaro : “I decide today to leave my function as president of the LR group in the Assembly for the sake of clarity, consistency and responsibility”, he assured. “I remain a right-wing man, but I no longer recognize myself in LR’s approach”, explained Damien Abad in particular, affirming that “faced with the populist danger, [il] don’t believe[yait] not to old divisions, but to the gathering of all those who wish to advance our country”.
The departure of Damien Abad from the presidency of the LR group in the Assembly and his putting on leave of the Republicans just before the legislative elections is a blow for the party founded by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2015 on the ashes of the UMP. “Yes [LREM] managed to poach Abad, we would clearly be in trouble for the legislative elections. He is the boss of the LR deputies, can you imagine the confusion in the minds of the voters?” confided a party executive several days ago to the Figaro. An elected LR also said that Damien Abad would have “received a few elected officials in a small committee at the Assembly”, from Monday April 25. “How many felons?” wondered this same elected official.
Thursday, May 19, Damien Abad himself assured it in the columns of Figaro: “There is no unanimity of the group against me, nor for a frontal and radical opposition to Emmanuel Macron. I received many messages of support from LR deputies. I don’t want to put them in difficulty, but they share my political line.”Damien Abad is still a candidate for the upcoming legislative elections, in the 5th constituency of the Ain, where he has been elected since 2012. To stay in government, he will therefore have to win the ballot. And Les Républicains should complicate his task, the party having hastened to invest a candidate in front of him, as indicated by France Télévisions from this Thursday, May 19. LR is counting on Julien Martinez, municipal councilor of Oyonnax, to disrupt the campaign of the recent minister. LREM had not invested any candidate against Damien Abad. Another sign of rapprochement with the presidential majority and another cause for anger among the leaders of the Republicans before his appointment.
Damien Abad was therefore until now LR deputy for Ain and president of the Les Républicains group in the National Assembly. Born April 5, 1980 in Nîmes, he comes from a family that fled Franco’s Spain during the 1930s and 1940s. The name Abad is also of Languedoc and Catalan origin. Damien Abad follows a brilliant schooling, despite his disability linked to a neurological disease, arthrogryposis (read below). He graduated from Sciences Po Bordeaux and graduated from Sciences Po Paris in the 2000s, where he became a lecturer. However, he will not succeed in integrating the ENA, failing twice in the Grand oral of the school of administration.
Young, Damien Abad approaches politics very early, working for centrist groups in the National Assembly on budgetary and tax issues. He will be a candidate in the 2007 legislative elections in the Yvelines, but will obtain less than 5% of the votes in the first round. Founder of the “Young Centrists” in 2008, he became Deputy Secretary General of the New Center two years later. Damien Abad then seeks a territory as a base and is successively elected municipal councilor of Vauvert (Gard), European deputy in the South-East constituency thanks to an alliance UMP-NC in 2009, then regional councilor of Rhône- Alps and finally departmental councilor of Ain, finally finding a department of adoption and a new party: the UMP. During the 2012 legislative elections, he was elected deputy in the newly created 5th constituency of Ain. He was re-elected in 2017 with 35% of the vote in the first round and 67% in the second, against a candidate from the Republic in March.
Damien Abad is known to have been one of the youngest elected members of the European Parliament, the youngest of French MEPs. He will also be one of the six youngest deputies in France to the National Assembly. Supporter of Bruno Le Maire for the primary of the right in 2016 and nevertheless faithful to François Fillon during the 2017 campaign, he will be vice-president of the Republicans for a time after having supported Laurent Wauquiez for the leadership of the party. He had supported Xavier Bertrand ahead of the 2022 presidential election and had since appeared in favor of a rapprochement with LREM.