This is the culmination of a series of complaints filed at the beginning of 2024. Monday April 29, at the end of a day in police custody, Gérard Depardieu was given a summons to appear before the criminal court in October. “He will be judged (…) for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021 to the detriment of two victims, on the set of the film Green Shutters », specifies the Paris prosecutor’s office. A third complaint, relating to facts that occurred in 2014 during the filming of the film The Magician and the Siameseis likely to be subject to limitation.
The 75-year-old actor, presumed innocent, disputes the facts with which he is accused. Contacted, his lawyers, Mare Christian Saint-Palais and Béatrice Geissmann-Achille, did not respond to requests from World.
“My clients have confidence in justice. If the prosecution has decided to prosecute Mr. Depardieu, it is because it considers that he has sufficient evidence”believes for her part Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, lawyer for two of the three plaintiffs. “It is time for him to be tried for the sexual violence denounced for years. It is also time for there to be a law on “rolling statute of limitations”.” she continues. This concept, which exists for minor victims, makes it possible to extend the time limits for prosecuting an old attack if the perpetrator has committed other subsequent attacks, not prescribed for their part.
Testimonies against the actor began in 2018. In the wake of #metoo, the “Pay your filming” page – which shares anonymous accounts of sexual violence in cinema on social networks – launches an appeal concerning Gérard Depardieu, without directly name the actor, after having received two alerts concerning him. That same year, actress Charlotte Arnould, then aged 23 years old, filed a complaint for “rape” and “sexual assault”, leading to the actor’s first indictment in 2020.
“He said to me: “We’ll see each other again, my darling!” »
But it was only three years later that a series of events precipitated the filing of three new complaints, according to the complainants’ account. In April 2023, Mediapart publish the testimonies of thirteen women accusing the septuagenarian of sexual violence. The actor denies any sexual violence in a open letter published in October by Le Figaro. “Never, ever have I abused a woman, he writes. Hurting a woman would be like kicking my own mother in the stomach. »
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