The Decazeville resident, a regional councillor, was tried this Wednesday in Rodez for moral and sexual harassment.
Bruno Leleu was known as a figure of the National Rally, in Decazeville and more generally in the department. For more than ten years, he chaired the party locally. In our columns, he regularly congratulated himself, in his very particular banter of a child of Tourcoing, on having increased his score in a territory that, in the past, paid little attention to the extreme right… Since 2016, he also sat on the regional council within the RN group. Until the accusations revealed in November 2023 of moral and sexual harassment of one of his former employees, within his company Iso d’Oc, based in Decazeville and liquidated this summer.
Yesterday, the one who now says he has “lost all of its public space because of the media tribunal”had an appointment with the magistrates of Ruthenia. After several postponements and press releases where he proclaimed his innocence, his explanations were particularly awaited. As were the deliberations and a potential sentence that could permanently remove him from the political landscape… But the decision was not made, the Aveyron judges adjourning it until October 16.
“Do you want it as much as I do?”
In the meantime, the court spent several hours considering the personality “multiple” of the politician, as described by the prosecutor of the day, Esther Paillette. She requested an eight-month suspended prison sentence for the defendant and a two-year obligation to seek treatment. During her requisitions, she notably cited the numerous text messages sent by the boss to his former saleswoman, a mother of three children. She had joined Iso d’Oc during the Covid period, in 2020, after a divorce in the South of France.
The beginning of a new life within a company that was then flourishing with the famous €1 insulation. Very quickly and during her trial period, the employee received several text messages from her boss. The president Blandine Arrial read them. Excerpts: “Do you want it as much as I do? You know, it’s been since the beginning!”, “What’s stopping us from letting go”, “If you’re my mistress, you and your children will no longer have money worries”, “you’re badly fucked, I can take care of you”, “a greedy lick on a little rosebud”…
A previous complaint for sexual assault in 2018, closed
The advances pile up and the young woman, born in 1987, refuses to continue the adventure within the company. She leaves but will return several months later, for a permanent contract this time. “I needed this job and I had set conditions, I had told him that he was married and that I didn’t want it”she testified before the judges. In 2022, she filed a complaint, eight months after her departure, this time definitive, from the company. “I hesitated because he was a strong politician. He said he had the time and the money, that it would be classified.”she says, referring to a previous complaint against Bruno Leleu, in 2018, for sexual assault. This one had been closed.
In front of the investigators, the mother will also describe a scene during which the politician got naked and rubbed his penis against her leg in a bar… She will also mention moral harassment, demeaning remarks, orders “to go and get cocaine in Toulouse” during his working hours, passing by his home. Several of his former colleagues will also decry the indelicate way in which Bruno Leleu spoke of him in front of them. They describe “a vulgar, salacious character”a man who has “a problem with the female gender and only talks about sex”a kind of “Almighty God, permitting himself everything because he is political“…
“Soon, I’ll be accused of eating children!”
“I refute everything”Bruno Leleu defended himself at the bar. On the text messages, he indicates that if they were indeed sent from his mobile phone, this one “was available to several people.” To the point of implying that it didn’t have any originally? “I don’t remember sending this and the problem with the iPhone is that you can use it and then delete the messages…”
On the testimonies, they “are fake and all come from Madame’s troupe”, the former RN executive still assures. Hands in his pockets, he will even trigger the anger of the president who reprimands him for his “arrogance”, when he cuts it and throws: “Soon, I’ll be accused of eating children!“
Her counsel, Me Cécilia Fraudet, questioned the fact that the complainant “had returned to the company after her trial period despite saying she was being harassed.” “Can someone be convicted on the basis of testimonies against them where their personality is described?”she pleaded again, before asking for her client to be acquitted. Opposite, Me Sébastien Leblond requested compensation for the damages in the amount of €15,000 for his client. Decision on October 16.
