2024-03-02 14:21:03
By Simon Pierre
Published 45 minutes ago, Updated 5 minutes ago
“What do you blame me for? To have flirted?” replied Dominique Besnehard following the two accusations. YOHAN BONNET / AFP
In an investigation by L’Obs published Thursday February 29 on sexual violence in cinema, two men blame producer Dominique Besnehard. The former artistic agent assures that he never “promised a role in exchange for a favor”.
#MeTooGarçons has continued to gain momentum for several weeks. On February 22, actor Aurélien Wiik declared on social networks that he had been abused from the age of 11 to the age of 15 by his agent and other members of his entourage. In a survey published by The Obs Thursday February 29, which reveals new testimonies and accusations of sexual assault, the name of the famous artistic agent Dominique Besnehard is cited by two men, Farouk Benalleg and Pierre Bégué.
Actor Farouk Benalleg claims to have met the co-producer of the series Ten percent , in 1994. “Dominique immediately invited me to the Olympia to see Julien Clerc, took me backstage, where I met every possible star, then we had dinner with Catherine Deneuve. You imagine for a young actor! I was amazed!” he assures The Obs. “And then suddenly, in the street, he came up to me and gave me a skate. I went from heaven to hell, in a second, he says. The one who was still a young actor at the time would have retorted: ““I don’t want that.” The next day, I returned to the Artmedia agency, but there, Dominique Besnehard then pissed me off, calling me a cockroach, in front of around thirty people. For me, it was over.”
Farouk Benalleg explains why it was so difficult for him to testify at the time: “We men are told ‘it’s easy, you can put your fist to your face’, but if I had done that, it was dead for me, professionally! And you see me, with my 1m90 height, going to the cops to say “I was attacked by Dominique Besnehard?”
The investigation also reports the testimony of Pierre Bégué, a former actor converted into a real estate agent. In 2017, the latter would have sent an email to Dominique Besnehard to inform him of a trauma: “after several psychoanalyses and having definitively abandoned my dream of being an actor. For ten years I have been ashamed of having allowed myself to be kissed, touched and abused in my weakness or my naivety. Certainly, you did not rape me but, even so many years later, I suffer and will suffer forever from having been considered like a piece of meat.
“Maybe I hit on them, so what?»
Annoyed, Dominique Besnehard strongly refuted these accusations: “Maybe I hit on them, so what?, he says. “We have to be careful, today, under the pretext of #MeToo, we say and do anything.” The producer adds: “What do you blame me for? For flirting? Flirting is one thing, abusing your power is another. Never in my life have I promised a role in exchange for a favor.” Concerning the potential influence of a casting director over a young actor, he responds: “These questions are recent, they were not in people’s minds at the time”, he concludes. The investigation does not specify whether Farouk Benalleg and Pierre Bégué filed a complaint.
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