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As famous as he is controversial, the French actor Gérard Depardieu was charged in December for rape and sexual assault, after an actress filed a complaint against the interpreter in 2018. Despite the fact that the investigation was shelved by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, the plaintiff managed to which was reopened by an investigating judge in 2020.
The world-renowned French actor Gérard Depardieu was charged with “rape” and “sexual assault” on December 16, according to judicial sources this Tuesday, after an actress filed a complaint against the artist in the summer of 2018.
The plaintiff accused Depardieu of having raped her twice in August 2018, both at the actor’s Parisian home. In principle, the complaint was filed in Aix-en-Provence, a city in the south of France, but it ended up being taken over by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office after the local authority declared itself “incompetent”.
Later, on June 4, 2019, the French Public Prosecutor’s Office closed the preliminary investigation of nine months, alleging that “the numerous investigations carried out” had not made it possible to “characterize the crimes reported in all their constituent elements.”
Despite the prosecution’s ruling, the complainant, a young actress and dancer, succeeded in having the case subsequently entrusted to an investigating judge in 2020.
In an interrogation held on December 16, the magistrate considered that there were “serious or corroborating indications” that the actor could have committed the denounced acts, for which he accused him of “rape” and “sexual assault.”
Charges that the actor “contests”
Depardieu, 72, knew the girl’s father and was in contact with her to give her advice on her career. The girl said she was abused on the sidelines of an informal rehearsal for a play, notes the newspaper ‘Le Parisien‘. For his part, the actor “absolutely” contested the charges against him and assured that relations with the actress had always been consensual.
The actor’s lawyer, Hervé Témime, who was contacted by the AFP agency, “regretted that the information was made public” and maintained that Depardieu, who is free without judicial control, categorically denies having committed any infraction or having had ” the least criminal behavior “.
On the other front, the plaintiff’s lawyer, Me Élodie Tuaillon-Hibon, asked that “the privacy and privacy of her client be preserved.”
Known by the general public for his roles in films such as ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ (1990) or for the ‘Asterix and Obélix’ saga, Gérard Depardieu is not the only reference of French cinema caught in the wave of #MeToo. The numerous allegations of rape and sexual assault against the American producer Harvey Weinstein, uncovered in the fall of 2017, later dragged the directors Christophe Ruggia and Luc Besson, as well as the president of the National Film Center, Dominique Boutonnat, all of them accused of sexual assault and rape.
With AFP and local media
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