Georges Tron

June 5: France’s traditional lack of interest in its politicians’ sexual adventures has turned into slack-jawed amazement as details emerge of what the mayor of Draveil allegedly got up to during his lunch hour.

“Monsieur le maire”, it seems, liked to round off lunch with a threesome back at the office, according to police witness statements about toe-sucking and lesbian as well as abusive sex that were leaked on the Internet last week.

In the old days such claims would never have been made public. Today, the proclivities of Georges Tron, the mayor said to have the foot fetish, are the talk of the nation as France debates the extent to which it has previously turned a blind eye to sexual misconduct by male politicians.

Tron, 53, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement party, was forced to resign last week as a junior civil service minister after two employees in the town hall at Draveil — a suburb of Paris where he is still mayor — accused him and Brigitte Gruel, his cultural adviser, of sexual assault.

The plaintiffs, one of whom has been identified only as “Laura”, claim to have been inspired by the Guinean hotel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, of trying to rape her in New York and tell a similar tale of harassment that began in the job interview.

Professing prowess as a reflexologist, Tron, it is alleged, massaged the women’s feet without asking permission. In subsequent lunch meetings he placed the women’s legs on his lap under the table so that he could massage their feet.

“He made sure I had several glasses of wine,” one of the women said in her police statement before describing what happened in Tron’s office after Gruel locked the door.

“Brigitte stood behind me, caressing my shoulders and breasts while undoing my bra. Mr. Tron lifted my skirt and put his hand in my panties. I was too stunned to react, I wasn’t expecting it, I hoped he would stop.” But allegedly he did not.

“Mr. Tron guided my hand to caress Brigitte’s breasts,” she continued. A bit later, she said: “I heard Brigitte perform oral sex on Mr. Tron. I preferred not to open my eyes.”

Another woman said Tron sucked her toes and abused her with his fingers. “I often ended up naked in his office.” She complained that Tron and Brigitte had turned her into a “sexual object” and that the only reason she stayed was because she needed the job.

Tron, whose alleged foot fixation has made him a national laughing stock, was not the only former minister under investigation last week for sexual misconduct. On Friday, police questioned Luc Ferry, a former education minister, over his claims that another minister’s arrest in Morocco at an orgy with small boys had been hushed up.

“Sick of machos,” was how Liberation, the left-wing newspaper, summed up the national mood, wondering if the capital of romance and seduction had become a hotbed of sexual abuse.