A French minister resigned from the government on Sunday to fight allegations of sexual harassment, two weeks after former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sensational New York arrest on sex crime charges.
Former French civil service minister Georges Tron, accused of sexually harassing two women who worked for him at the town hall where he is mayor, said in his letter of resignation to French President Nicolas Sarkozy that he would prove his innocence.
He stepped down after prosecutors said on Wednesday they had opened a preliminary investigation into accusations of sexual aggression and rape against him.
Photo: Reuters
His lawyer has described his accusers as “inveterate liars.”
The 53-year-old minister said in his resignation letter he would disprove the “vindictive” accusations by the former municipal employees, one of whom he said was sacked for fraud and the other for “undignified behavior.”
The two women, aged 34 and 36, claimed in the complaints they lodged with the public prosecutor that Tron had assaulted them when they worked in the town hall of the south Paris suburb Draveil.
The alleged incidents took place between 2007 and last year.
One of the women said she was encouraged to speak up after the arrest of Strauss-Kahn.
“When I see that a chambermaid was capable of taking on Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I tell myself I don’t have the right to stay silent,” the woman, who was not identified by name, told Le Parisien newspaper.
“Other women may be suffering what I suffered. I have to help them. We must break this code of silence,” she said.
Strauss-Kahn has stepped down from his post at the head of the IMF to devote himself to fighting charges that he tried to rape a chambermaid in his New York hotel suite.
Tron’s resignation was announced in a statement by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who praised Tron for his “courage” in taking a decision which was in the “general interest.”
Tron has linked the case to a feud with relatives of right-wing National Front leader Marine Le Pen living in Draveil, which prompted Le Pen to announce that she was suing him for defamation.
He has alleged that his political rivals were trying to gain momentum from the arrest of Strauss-Kahn.
“I am not naive. They are trying to echo what’s happening on the other side of the Atlantic,” he said on last Tuesday.
Le Pen, who has dismissed the allegation, said on Thursday she would sue Tron for libel. She has been calling for his resignation.
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