The president of the National Cinema Center (CNC) is accused of having sexually assaulted his nephew during a vacation in Greece. Facts he denies.
Source AFP
© LUDOVIC MARIN / POOL / AFP
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Lhe president of the National Cinema Center (CNC), Dominique Boutonnat, escapes the assizes. The 52-year-old man was accused of having sexually assaulted his godson in 2020 and of having attempted to rape him, but the Nanterre prosecution did not retain the qualification of “attempted rape”. Therefore, Dominique Boutonnat will be tried before a criminal court, and not before an assize court, where the penalties incurred would have been heavier. Dominique Boutonnat still vigorously disputes the allegations.
In October 2020, a complaint was filed by his godson for facts dating from August 2020, during a vacation in Greece. He was then 21 years old. In this complaint consulted by AFP, the young man accuses his godfather, with whom he has no family ties, of having tried to “masturbate” him on the night of August 3, 2020, after he had bathed naked in the pool. “I masturbate him so that he stops touching me”, he denounces, assuring that his godfather had then tried to impose oral sex on him.
“What we want is for Dominique Boutonnat to answer for his actions in court,” Caroline Toby, the godson’s lawyer, now 23, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Following a full judicial investigation, the judge considered that there were sufficient charges to refer Dominique Boutonnat to court and what we especially want is that my client’s victim status be recognized. by justice,” she continued.
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A complaint for slanderous denunciation has been filed
At the end of his police custody, in February 2021, Dominique Boutonnat had been indicted for attempted rape and sexual assault. But the prosecution had finally requested a trial for sexual assault, dismissing the qualification of attempted rape. The judges followed his advice in their decision rendered on Wednesday, September 28.
Dominique Boutonnat’s lawyer, Emmanuel Marsigny, said he was “outraged by the communication” by the Nanterre prosecutor’s office of this dismissal information, “even though the principal concerned has not yet been notified”. In his view, the prosecution wanted to “save face” because it had to “drop” the charge of attempted rape in its requisitions, “in the face of the elements revealed by the investigation” which, according to Maître Marsigny, “demonstrate the falsehood of the charges”. A complaint for denunciation of imaginary crime and slanderous denunciation has been filed, he said.
According to elements of the order, of which AFP was aware, the investigation “could not establish that Dominique Boutonnat intended to carry out sexual penetration”. However, the president of the CNC does not dispute “in any way the kisses given to his godson nor the fact of lying naked in the bed of his godson, whose inexperience in sexual matters and homosexual orientation he knew”, notes the judge. “Thus, if the alleged facts do not constitute an attempted rape, the facts of sexual assault are sufficiently characterized,” she believes.
During the investigation, Dominique Boutonnat admitted “physical contact with his godson”, but he disputed “both the extent and the sexual connotation”, considers the judge, who underlines “the ascendancy exercised” by the godfather on his godson, the latter considering him “like a second father”. A psychological expertise of the godson also showed the “traumatic consequences” of this night of August 3, 2020 and revealed no “tendency to disguise reality”, notes the judge.