“Neither rapist, nor predator”: indicted since 2020 for suspicion of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould, actor Gérard Depardieu debunked the accusations against him on Sunday, denouncing an orchestrated “lynching” by the “media court”. “I can no longer consent to what I hear, what I have read about myself for several months. I thought I didn’t care, but no, actually no. This all gets to me. Worse still, turns me off,” writes the 74-year-old actor in an open letter published in the opinion section of the newspaper Le Figaro.
This long text, resembling a poem, constitutes the first speech by the monument of French cinema since the publication of new testimonies against it by Médiapart in the spring. “Never, ever have I abused a woman,” he wrote. Without naming her, Gérard Depardieu attacks Charlotte Arnould, the actress who filed a complaint against him for two rapes in 2018.
“If she was under influence, it was under her own influence”
According to him, “A woman came to my house the first time, walking lightly, going into my room of her own free will. She says today that she was raped there.” “There has never been any constraint, violence or protest between us,” he assures us. And to continue: “If she was under the influence, it was under her own influence, she was never under my influence.” “If, thinking of living the present intensely, I hurt or shocked anyone, I never thought of doing any harm and please forgive me for behaving like a child who wants to amuse the gallery”, he writes again, and insists that he is “neither a rapist nor a predator”.
“To the media tribunal, to the lynching that has been reserved for me, I have only my word to oppose,” he concludes. Gérard Depardieu was indicted on December 16, 2020 for “rape” and “sexual assault” after the complaint from the actress, who had denounced two rapes at the star’s Parisian home at the end of August 2018. In the summer of 2020, she obtained that the investigation, first closed by the Paris prosecutor’s office in June 2019, be entrusted to an investigating judge.
In April, Médiapart revealed the testimonies of 13 women accusing Gérard Depardieu of sexual violence. The Paris prosecutor’s office indicated at the time of these revelations that it had “not received any new complaints to date”. The prosecution also specified that the investigation opened in July 2020 following this actress’ complaint was continuing.