Macron’s step-daughter: I’m still not over mum’s affair
She tells of humiliation at ‘forbidden’ love between teacher, 39, and pupil, 15
EMMANUEL Macron’s step-daughter has spoken for the first time about her mother’s once scandalous affair with the future president of France.
In an interview that will make uncomfortable reading for both Mr Macron and his first lady Brigitte, Tiphaine Auzière admits she remains wounded by the ‘forbidden relationship’ between a married teacher and a teenage pupil.
Ms Auzière, who is publishing her first novel, also used her talk with Paris Match to address claims that Mrs Macron, now 70, was born male. She was just ten when she found out that her mother, then 39, was seeing a pupil aged 15.
She and her two siblings, sister Laurence, now 47, and brother, Sébastien, 49, had to put up with constant speculation about the ‘forbidden relationship’ in Amiens, northern France.
They were all pupils at La Providence, a Roman Catholic high school, where the then Madame Auzière was
‘A sorrow and an opportunity’
a drama teacher. ‘I learned a lot about human nature,’ Ms Auzière, now 40, said.
‘I know that, in these moments, we must focus on the essential and move forward. The attacks, the backbiting, the judgments. It was not yet the era of social networks, but we were in a small provincial town. Everything is known.
‘Despite all this, they stood tall. I gained an open mind, the desire to move forward without listening to peripheral noise, and gained greater tolerance.’
Ms Auzière was, however, particularly upset that her father, AndréLouis Auzière, had to leave the family home in 1994, even though he did not divorce until 2006.
Mr Macron, 46, and Mrs Macron married in 2007. ‘ A family separation can be a sorrow and an opportunity,’ said Ms Auzière. ‘I have a beloved father and stepfather.’
She said she always spoke about Mr Auzière in the present tense, though he died in 2019.
Ms Auzière said she was also wounded by social media claims that her mother was born male.
‘I have concerns about the level of society when I hear what is circulating on social networks about my mother,’ she said.
Brigitte Macron won a libel case against a freelance journalist who had circulated the rumours about her sex last year. Ms Auzière, a lawyer, now lives in Calais with her husband and two children.