LASSALLE. Jean Lassalle is accused of rape and sexual assault by a woman. The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation against the politician who denies the charges against him.
“I don’t have to deny or not deny, I’m waiting to find out more”, here is Jean Lassalle’s first reaction to the accusation of rape and sexual assault against him. Justice opened a preliminary investigation, targeting the former presidential candidate, in May 2023, according to information from BFMTV. The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office told Franceinfo that the facts are “unconfirmed for the time being and the investigations are continuing” and that the judicial police are in charge of this case.
The facts denounced by the complainant date from 2010. The politician was then a deputy for Pyrénées-Atlantiques and a candidate for the regional elections in Aquitaine under the label of MoDem. The 45-year-old accuser allegedly contacted Jean Lassalle to solve her daughter’s school problems. “We were in the middle of the campaign for the regional elections. I thought the candidates could help me,” she explained to BFMTV. Of the three candidates at the time, only Jean Lassalle answered him. After a first contact, this woman joined the regional candidate’s campaign team. One evening, the deputy would have asked him “to join him in a large hotel in Bordeaux”. “I go there with my posters and my pot of glue thinking it’s a team meeting,” the mother said in her testimony.
Determined to denounce the facts, the complainant indicated that she found herself alone with Jean Lassalle in a hotel room: “He kissed me twice. I pushed him away. I even told him that I could call someone. another one if he wanted. At that point, I didn’t know what to do. I told him I was pregnant, which I was. But he didn’t believe me. And then here you go…” She added, in her version of the facts, that she was the victim of a rape the same evening.
The woman who accuses Jean Lassalle of abuse would then have entrusted her story to relatives, but would have decided not to file a complaint at the time. It was in 2023, 13 years after the events, according to the chronology of her story, that she indicates that she found the strength to denounce the sexual assault and the rape that she says she suffered. “I realized that I had been in pain for twelve years because of that. It even led me to attempt suicide. And then, recently, I decided to change my life.
The politician reacted to France Bleu Béarn Bigorre’s microphone: “I don’t remember this person. This person would have asked me for a favor, and then I would have raped her in a hotel room. I don’t remember anyone in particular asking me for a favor for their son or daughter. Afterwards, I was never drugged or drunk to the point of finding a pregnant woman in my bed and raping her.” He also announced that he did not feel the need for a lawyer.
BFMTV announced that Jean Lassalle should be summoned in the coming days during a free audition. This information was not commented on by the politician or his chief of staff. The former candidate for the presidency of the Republic is currently on the set of a reality TV show on M6.
