Plastic surgeon Claude Lévêque indicted for rape of a minor

2023-06-23 21:44:41
By Le Figaro with AFP

Posted 3 hours ago, Updated 35 minutes ago

Claude Lévêque, here at the Venice Biennale in 2009, was indicted for rape and sexual assault on a 15-year-old minor. ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP

Claude Lévêque has been the subject of an investigation since 2019 for rape and sexual assault, which dates back to the mid-1980s

Plastic surgeon Claude Lévêque, 70, was indicted for rape and sexual assault on two brothers, minors at the material time, the Bobigny prosecutor’s office announced on Friday June 23, according to which other victims are not not to be excluded.

«Two victims are referred to in the qualifications retained, without excluding that there may be others who would declare themselves during the judicial investigation“, said the prosecution to AFP.

“A certain influence”

The artist is indicted for “rape of a 15 year old minor», «rape of a minor by a person in authority» et «sexual assault on a 15-year-old minor by a person in authority“, detailed the same source. The investigation was opened in the spring of 2019 and entrusted to the territorial security of Seine-Saint-Denis, the department where the visual artist resides, following a complaint from the sculptor Laurent Foulon.

In the daily columns The world, the latter recounted having been raped by Claude Lévêque from the age of 10 until he was 17, in the mid-1980s. He reported these acts in a letter addressed to the public prosecutor of Bobigny in February 2019. The facts concerning him are prescribed, indicates the Bobigny prosecution. But two new victims, two brothers, are identified, reveals Le Monde. They are from Nièvre and have known Claude Lévêque since childhood. The artist witnessed their parents’ wedding.

“I supported it”

During their hearings, one of them mentions sexual relations between the ages of 13 and 16, between 1997 and 2000. He says he was “ masturbatedrepeatedly by Claude Lévêque, reports The world. «I didn’t like it, but I tolerated it. I put up with him because, in the words of today, I would say that he had a certain hold on me and that we could spend really nice moments in his company. It was forced for me, even if there was never any physical violence, his behavior and his form of manipulation made me accept that“, says one of the victims to the police.

His brother is said to have suffered his first sodomy rapes when he was 10-11 years old. Both brothers said they were under the influence. Reached by AFP, Claude Lévêque’s lawyer, Me Patrick Klugman, declined to comment. During the opening of the investigation, the plastic surgeon had pointed out “accusations graves» and denounced «defamatory and libelous statements supported by Laurent Foulon“, believing that the latter showed a”incessant relentlessnesstowards him, in a press release sent to AFP by his former lawyer, Emmanuel Pierrat.

Cumbersome works

After the accusations of rape, his monumental works became cumbersome for municipalities and exhibition venues. In Montreuil in Seine-Saint-Denis, his blue light installation which revolves around the water tower of Bel-Air and entitled “Modern Dance“had been disconnected for a time and then turned back on at the request of residents of the popular district, in March 2022. At the modern art museum of the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud (Maine-et-Loire), the installation “Death in summer“, was withdrawn from the permanent exhibition at the request of the president of the regional council of Pays de la Loire, Christelle Morançais.

Read alsoAt the Élysée, the work of Claude Lévêque “very certainly withdrawn”, according to Roselyne Bachelot

A fashionable figure in the avant-gardes of the late 1970s, the libertarian artist is known for his installations, often with provocative themes. At the end of 2018, a diadem with 16 stainless steel branches at the top of the Opéra Bastille and two huge luminous wheels on the grand staircase of the Palais Garnier caused controversy, with some deeming these installations inappropriate.

He has worked in emblematic places such as the Louvre, the Banque de France, the Tuileries basin, but also in a housing estate, disused factories… Guest artist of the French Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, he presented a cross-shaped cage with black flags fluttering silently: a “Great Evening“, wanting to illustrate”loss of illusions“, he had then explained.

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