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In the newest of a number of scandals to check French attitudes towards sexual abuse of minors, a outstanding political scientist, radio present host and tv commentator has stop his media and college posts after being accused in a brand new ebook of committing incest along with his teenage stepson greater than 30 years in the past.

Olivier Duhamel, a French public mental, stated in a Twitter submit Monday that he had determined to step down on account of “private assaults” in opposition to him, and out of a willpower to “protect the establishments through which I work.” These included the Sciences Po college, the place Mr. Duhamel, 70, headed the physique overseeing the famend Paris establishment.

Camille Kouchner, in a ebook referred to as “La familia grande” to be revealed Thursday, stated Mr. Duhamel persistently abused her twin brother, beginning when he was 14, which might be thought of incest beneath French legislation. In an announcement to the each day Le Monde, the brother, who’s recognized within the ebook as “Victor,” stated, “I verify that what my sister has written concerning the actions of Olivier Duhamel towards me is appropriate.”

Addressing Mr. Duhamel immediately within the ebook, excerpts from which appeared in Le Monde, Ms. Kouchner writes: “I’m going to clarify to you who hold forth on the radio, you who provide the present of your evaluation to college students, and strut about on TV levels. I’m going to clarify that you would, at the least, have stated sorry.”

Mr. Duhamel couldn’t be reached for remark. He instructed the weekly journal L’Obs: “I don’t react, and I’ve nothing to say. Anything I’d say would, in any occasion, be, I don’t know, distorted.”

Ms. Kouchner, a lawyer and lecturer, and her brother, whose full title has not been disclosed out of protecting discretion, are the youngsters of Bernard Kouchner, the co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, and of the late Évelyne Pisier, a author who later married Mr. Duhamel.

Mr. Kouchner, a former French overseas minister, expressed his admiration for “the braveness of my daughter Camille” and stated by way of his lawyer that “a heavy secret that has weighed on us for too lengthy has fortunately been lifted.”

The secret was certainly identified for a very long time — by Ms. Kouchner, by her mom Ms. Pisier, by her older brother Julien, and by her father Mr. Kouchner, amongst others, Ms. Kouchner writes. Part of the household’s problem in breaking the silence, she says, lay in attempting to disentangle their love for Mr. Duhamel, and their worry for his destiny, from the horrible actuality of what he had achieved.