2023-07-18 21:30:00
The Paris prosecutor’s office has confirmed to several media that it has opened a preliminary investigation for rape and sexual assault, targeting Nicolas Bedos, for three separate complaints.
Summary
[Mis à jour le 18 juillet 2023 à 21h30] A preliminary investigation for rape and sexual assault was opened on July 5 against Nicolas Bedos, the Paris prosecutor’s office reported on July 18 to BFM TVconfirming information from Mediapart. Three procedures would be underway in this investigation: one for “rape and sexual assault” and the other two for “sexual assault”. One of the women has already been heard by investigators on July 4, while another should be on July 21.
With the pure player, two testified to the acts of the actor and director. The first, who calls herself Chloé, aged 50, accuses Nicolas Bedos of having raped her at the Bedos home in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1999. The second, a certain Marion, spoke of her sexual assault, when she was a teenager, in a vacation home, in 2017. The investigation was entrusted to the first district of the Paris judicial police, said a source close to the file and the prosecution.
The actor is already the subject of a complaint separate from this preliminary investigation for “sexual assault”, filed on June 12 by a woman who accuses him of having touched his private parts over his pants, in a Parisian club in the night of June 1 to 2. Thus, he was summoned before the Paris Criminal Court in February 2024, after his police custody on June 21.
Nicolas Bedos accused of sexual assault
Previously, Nicolas Bedos was the subject of a complaint for sexual assault. According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, he will be tried in early 2024 for sexual assault in a state of manifest intoxication, and faces up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros. The complaint was filed on June 12 by a 25-year-old young woman, who accuses the director of having “slipped his hand in his private parts, over his pants” during a night out. from June 1 to 2, 2023.
According to Le Monde, Nicolas Bedos told the investigators that he did not question the testimony of the complainant. He nevertheless guarantees that, “if this gesture existed”, it “can only be accidental”. His lawyer, Me Julia Minkowski, assures that his client has no “recollection” of the facts. “Such a gesture (…) could only have been accidental under the effect of drunkenness,” she added.
The facts go back to the night of June 1 to 2, 2023, in a club in the first arrondissement of Paris where the young woman would have gone with an actress friend, her brother and a few friends. In her complaint, the complainant explains that Nicolas Bedos, whom she would not have recognized immediately, would have stared at her for a long time before approaching her. It would then “slip[é] his hand at the level of his private parts, over his pants”, then she would have felt a “friction”.
The complainant says she was alone with the director at the time of the events. She thinks that none of her relatives could have witnessed the attack she reports. She also insists that she had not consumed alcohol. The young woman says that she would have rejected Nicolas Bedos before throwing him: “Go get treatment!” At the time of the events, a security guard would have quickly been challenged by the commotion and would have asked the complainant if everything was fine. To which she would have replied: “Fire him!”.
Biography of Nicolas Bedos – Son of comedian Guy Bedos and Joëlle Bercot, Nicolas Bedos is a well-known director and screenwriter in the French cinema world. He notably directed his first film, Mr and Mrs Adelman in 2017, before releasing the critical success The good times in 2019. This last film, with Daniel Auteuil and Fanny Ardant, was nominated eleven times for the Césars and notably won the prize for Best Original Screenplay.
Subsequently, Nicolas Bedos directed Oss 117: Red alert in black Africa, released in 2021 and screened at the end of the Cannes Film Festival. More recently he released the film Masquerade in 2022, which has divided critics.
A controversial public figure
Nicolas Bedos is also a controversial public figure. In 2012, he was sentenced to a fine of 2,000 euros for publicly insulting the police. He was also convicted of drunk driving in 2010 and 2014 (also that year for contempt and death threats against police officers). He was then given a three-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 800 euros.
Nicolas Bedos is also indicted in 2014 for racial insult after a column in Marianne, but was finally released the following year, the justice considering that his remarks were not to be taken at face value. Finally, in 2020, a message on his Instagram account calling for people to give up wearing a mask in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic will cause controversy on social networks.
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