2023-07-19 09:25:55
By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted yesterday at 20:00, Updated 4 minutes ago
The 44-year-old filmmaker is due to appear in February 2024 before the Paris Criminal Court in another procedure for sexual assault while intoxicated.
Already summoned to the Paris Criminal Court in February 2024 for sexual assault while intoxicated, director and actor Nicolas Bedos, 44, is under investigation for rape and sexual assault after three separate complaints from women.
The preliminary investigation was opened on July 5 and entrusted to the first district of the Paris judicial police, the prosecution said on Tuesday, confirming information from Mediapart. Contacted, Nicolas Bedos’ lawyer, Me Julia Minkowski, did not wish to react.
Three new complaints
Two of the women who say they sent a report at the end of June to the Paris prosecutor’s office told Mediapart of the facts of a sexual nature of which they accuse Nicolas Bedos. One of them, a 50-year-old actress and screenwriter who calls herself Chloé, accuses the director of having raped her at the Bedos home in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) a night of 1999. Aged 26 at the time and a waitress, she had agreed to follow with friends and then with her parents Nicolas Bedos with whom a “form of friendship».
A second woman, under the first name of Marion, described to online media a sexual assault committed by the filmmaker in August 2017 in a vacation home. The facts denounced in the third complaint were not specified. It was the revelation of the actor’s police custody and the announcement of his trial that decided the first two women, who know each other, to testify with the courts, specifies Mediapart. The director was taken into custody on June 21 after a woman complained of touching his private parts over his pants in a Parisian club on the night of June 1-2.
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“Mode of operation”
At the end of his hearing, he was summoned to the Paris Criminal Court in February 2024 for sexual assault in a state of obvious intoxication, an offense for which he faces five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros. “He does not want to question the word of the complainant who describes an inappropriate gesture of a few seconds over her jeans“, had explained a few weeks ago his lawyer, Me Julia Minkowski. “But such a gesture, which he does not remember, which would have occurred on the dance floor of a nightclub, could only have been accidental under the effect of drunkenness.“, she added. According to Mediapart, the woman who calls herself Chloé clarified “to have gone to testify (to the courts) to say that it was certainly not an accident“. Marion, she denounces the pretext of alcohol advanced by the actor who notes, according to her, “more modus operandi than excuse“. The preliminary investigation will have to determine in particular if the facts denounced are not prescribed and if there are no other victims. Prior to 2017, the statute of limitations for sexual assault was three years and ten years for rape. The law now provides for a limitation period of six years and twenty years.
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Nicolas Bedos has several hats in the world of cinema: playwright, columnist, screenwriter and even actor. Son of the humorist Guy Bedos, he made a name for himself by distinguishing himself in many fields, since his theater debut in 2004, at barely 25 years old, with several plays including stage exit. Artist and humorist, claiming his politically incorrect, sometimes divisive positions, Nicolas Bedos is the author of four films, three of which were presented at the Cannes Film Festival. The good times (2019), his most noticed feature film, won eleven César nominations, including those for best film and best director, and attracted 1.2 million viewers in theaters. He turned the gratin of French cinema, from Jean Dujardin (OSS117: Red alert in black Africa) to Isabelle Adjani (Masquerade), via Daniel Auteuil, Guillaume Canet and Fanny Ardant.
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