In an Instagram publication from “After the violence”, a photo action for victims of domestic violence, Catherine Hiegel testifies to beatings at the time when she was pregnant and in a relationship with Richard Berry. The actor has already been brought to justice by their daughter who accuses him of incest, a complaint dismissed because it was time-barred.
Facts already known in broad strokes but not in detail and which had not caused much noise. In a publication from the Instagram account After the violence dated Thursday May 23, actress Catherine Hiegel denounces the domestic violence suffered when she was in a relationship with Richard Berry, although she does not mention him by name. Eyes straight into the lens, the actress holds a pad of paper on which she describes the abuse: “He bangs my head against the sink, stitched up at the arch; several slaps of course… The last one of seven months pregnant exploded my eardrum. Coline turns around in my stomach. Sentenced to a cesarean section. I didn’t file a complaint, I left him!!”
This is the first time that she has spoken so directly about the violence allegedly committed by the 73-year-old actor today, who himself admitted to having beaten his wife. in the columns of World in 2021, without returning to it afterwards. It is in this article that the daughter of the two actors, Coline Berry-Rojtman, made her accusations public. She denounces the incestuous relationships imposed by her father in her childhood (between 1984 and 1985), more precisely kisses on the mouth with her father’s tongue and “sex games” to which she had to submit, also in the company of her mother-in-law at the time, the singer Jeane Manson.
Since then, Jeane Manson has sued Coline Berry-Rojtman for defamation. If this complaint resulted in two first convictions at first instance and on appeal, in December 2023 the Court of Cassation annulled the conviction of Coline Berry-Rojtman and referred the case to the Lyon Court of Appeal. The complaint from the daughter of Catherine Hiegel and Richard Berry denouncing acts of rape and sexual assault on a minor aged 15 by her ascendant and corruption of a minor was dismissed due to statute of limitations.
It was Coline Berry-Rojtman who put Catherine Hiegel in contact with the photographer Marc Melki, behind the account After the violence. Since July 3, 2022, he has published photos of victims of domestic violence on the social network. His intention: “[Revenir] about the moment when everything changed, about the one time too many which pushed them to leave their partner who had become violent for them and for their children. The time they were able to say stop. The click. They all came out of domestic violence, sometimes after years of control and ordeal.” When some cannot speak, he asks celebrities to pose for them, like Nagui, Anna Mouglalis or Bruno Solo.