The actor appears on Monday for having sexually assaulted two women in 2021. A first step for the septuagenarian, also referred to justice for the rape of Charlotte Arnould.
It’s a role that he has not often played on screen. Gérard Depardieu will don the costume of a defendant, Monday October 28, before the Paris Criminal Court. The 75-year-old actor is on trial for sexual assault on two women during the filming of the film Green Shuttersby Jean Becker, in September 2021. In a disturbing analogy with his own situation, he plays a great actor of the 1970s at the twilight of his career.
This is the first time that the sacred monster of French cinema has appeared before the courts since he was accused of sexual violence. Will he be present at the hearing? “I confirm to you that Gérard Depardieu intends to appear before the court”his lawyer, Jérémie Assous, responded to franceinfo on Friday. His client disputes the facts with which he is accused. “The witnesses and evidence he produces will demonstrate that he is only the target of false accusations”added the criminal lawyer.
This affair was revealed by Mediapart, which first relayed, in February, the complaint of a film decorator for sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexist outrages. According to this 53-year-old woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, the events took place during the filming in a private mansion on Avenue Mozart, in the 16e district of Paris. According to his account to the investigative media, the actor first made many serious comments to her while she was working on setting up a set. An hour later, as she was leaving the set, the actor suddenly “caught brutally” et “blocked by closing her legs (on her) like a crab”then he “kneaded the waist, the stomach, going up to (ses) breasts”while throwing at him: “Come touch my big parasol, I’m going to shove it in your pussy…”
“I felt like I was in a wolf trap. I panicked, I was out of breath”she relates again, describing the “phenomenal strength” of the actor and remembering having been “pulled backwards” by arms, while others grabbed the actor’s hands.
“His bodyguards took him away. He was screaming and laughing to himself. He said to me: ‘We’ll see you again, my darling!’ I was stunned, shaken. It only lasted a few moments but it still resonates.”
The first complainantfrom Mediapart
In March, a second woman, aged 33, assistant director on the same shoot in 2021, also filed a complaint for sexual assault, as reported by Mediapart. She denounces “touching of the chest and buttocks”three times, from Gérard Depardieu.
After confiding in the second assistant director, the young woman said she received an apology from the actor. But afterwards, he made her live “an ordeal”according to his testimony to Mediapart: “He no longer let me do my job, I couldn’t talk to him to pass on information to him, nor come pick him up from the dressing rooms to accompany him to the set.” The assistant director claims to have been treated like “balance” on the set, having been made “yell at”. “Gérard had managed to make me feel guilty for having spoken about these acts and to make me feel bad”she adds.
The statements of these two women were confirmed to Mediapart by numerous members of the film team, who witnessed the events. The actress Anouk Grinberg also supported their testimonies by depicting to the information site a climate “suffocate, terrify”, “all this with impunity”. “From the first hours of filming, Depardieu was gritty, obscene”remembers the actress, who came out of silence at the end of 2023 on the accusations targeting the actor. Also interviewed by AFP, she confirmed that “from morning to evening, we had the right to his salaceries”.
“When film producers hire Depardieu on a film, they know they are hiring an abuser.”
Actress Anouk Grinbergà l’AFP
Contacted by Mediapart, the producers, Laurent Pétin and Michèle Halberstadt, spoke about “a risky project” that they have “agreed to produce, in respect of the presumption of innocence of Gérard Depardieu”. They claim that the“incident” concerning the decorator was treated with “kindness and understanding” by their production director, but ensure “to have been perfectly ignorant of the incident that occurred” for the assistant director.
A third complaint was the subject of investigations by the judicial police, but was dismissed by the prosecution due to the statute of limitations. The actor will therefore not have to explain these facts during the trial. They took place, according to the complainant, on the set of another film, The Magician and the Siameseby Jean-Pierre Mocky, in 2014.
This former film assistant, 24 years old at the time, spoke to Western Mail in February. She claims to have been attacked by Gérard Depardieu the first time at the actor’s home, where she had gone for production purposes. “I open a cupboard and he pushes me in, grabbing my butt and shouting: Scream! Scream! It’s going to make them cum down there”she testifies. The young woman reports a second attack during filming at the Doué-la-Fontaine arenas (Maine-et-Loire). According to her, the star grabbed her wrist and put his hand under her skirt. She remembers “his hands all over (son) corps” and of “his indecent words”.
“If we had a sliding statute of limitations for adult victims as well as for minor victims, these women could have legal recognition”regretted to the AFP the lawyer Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, hoping “legislative reform in this regard”. The rolling statute of limitations allows a first victim to benefit from the statute of limitations granted to a second when the perpetrator of the offense or sexual crime is identical. Contacted by franceinfo, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt did not wish to make any further comments before the hearing.
The debates and the decision rendered in this first trial have an important stake for the future. Gérard Depardieu has in fact been indicted since 2020 for rape and sexual assault on a young actress, Charlotte Arnould. The Paris prosecutor’s office requested his referral to a criminal court and it is now up to the investigating magistrate to order or not a trial. The actor is also the target of a fifth complaint, filed in Spain by journalist and writer Ruth Baza, who accuses him of having raped her in 1995 in Paris. A sixth complaint, from actress Hélène Darras for sexual assault during filming in 2007, was dismissed, again due to statute of limitations. In total, the actor is accused by around twenty women who testified in the press or in court.
In an open letter published by Le Figaro in October 2023, the actor insisted that he was not “neither a rapist nor a predator”. “Never, ever have I abused a woman”he wrote. After defending himself in the press, the actor will this time have the opportunity to do so in a legal forum. He faces five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros.
