2023-10-03 17:03:31
” It’s the world upside down. » Monday, actress Charlotte Arnould, who filed a rape complaint against Gérard Depardieu, reacted to the open letter published the day before in Le Figaro by the actor. The latter claims to be “neither a rapist nor a predator”, to have “never, ever abused a woman” and denounces a “lynching” against him in recent years.
Since Charlotte Arnould came out of silence at the end of 2021, at least sixteen other women have accused the actor of sexual violence during the filming of films or series. “He places himself as a victim in order to arouse compassion and sow doubt. He flouts the words of the victims,” Charlotte Arnould was indignant in Elle, in an interview. Le Parisien takes stock of the accusations targeting this monument of French cinema.
From complaint to indictment
It all started on August 27, 2018, when a young actress in her twenties presented herself at the Lambesc gendarmerie (Bouches-du-Rhône) to file a complaint against Gérard Depardieu, then aged 69. She claims to have been raped, at the actor’s Parisian home, twice, on August 7 and 13. At this time, the name of the complainant is unknown to the general public. We only know that she claims to have been abused on the sidelines of an informal rehearsal for a play and that her father is a friend of the actor.
The complaint was transmitted to the Paris public prosecutor’s office but after nine months of investigations, it was closed without further action because “the offenses could not be characterized”, justified the public prosecutor’s office in June 2019. The complainant, whose identity is still not revealed, does not want to stop there and files a new complaint with, this time, a civil party. An approach which allows him to obtain the opening of a judicial investigation, entrusted to an investigating judge in October 2020.
VIDEO. Fisticuff action by feminists in front of a cinema where Gérard Depardieu is showing
The magistrate considers, unlike the prosecution, that there are “serious and consistent” clues. A month later, Gérard Depardieu was indicted for “rape” and “sexual assault”. The actor will try to challenge this decision before the Paris Court of Appeal, only to have the Paris Chamber of Investigation reject his request for annulment at the beginning of 2022. To date, investigations continue.
Who are the victims ?
It was only in December 2021 that the complainant came out of silence to reveal her identity. “I am the victim of Depardieu”, wrote Charlotte Arnould at the time in a long message on Twitter (renamed X), shocked to see that “nothing is happening” and that the actor continues his career “while I survive”. Dancer and pianist, the promising young artist will later tell the press what happened in this Parisian apartment, hammering home the lack of consent to this day.
The release of speech is then initiated. After months of investigation, Mediapart revealed, last April, the testimonies of thirteen women all claiming “to have suffered inappropriate sexual gestures or remarks from the famous actor, of different seriousness, on the set of eleven films or series released between 2004 and 2022 or in external locations, but also the accounts of numerous witnesses.”
Actress, assistant director, technician… Most preferred to remain anonymous but others testified openly, like the actresses Sarah Brooks and Hélène Darras. A fifteenth then one sixteenth alleged victim came out of silence this summer. There could be others, Charlotte Arnould has always believed. None of these women have filed a complaint to date.
The actor’s defense
From the start, the actor has proclaimed his innocence. “The facts cause very serious harm to Gérard Depardieu who absolutely denies having committed the slightest offense or having engaged in the slightest criminal behavior”, reacted in 2018 his lawyer at the time, the late Me Hervé Temime. Even after his indictment, the actor denounced in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica “the totally unfounded nature of the accusations”, and assured: “I am innocent, I have nothing to fear. » After Mediapart’s revelations, his lawyers reiterated that he “formally denies all the accusations likely to come under criminal law”.
In the long poem-like text that he published in Le Figaro on Sunday, the actor asserts that Charlotte Arnould, without naming her, went “of her own free will into [sa] bedroom “. “There has never been any constraint, violence or protest between us,” he still assures us. He always defended a consensual relationship with the young woman.
On the professional side, his troubles with the law did not seem to harm him too much. In February 2022 alone, Gérard Depardieu starred in three films, and had shot nine over the last two years. However, the wind seems to have changed direction in recent months. The tour of his show “Gérard Depardieu chante Barbara” was disrupted in the spring by feminist demonstrations, forcing the production to cancel certain dates.
This Monday, another turnaround in the situation. Gérard Depardieu, who lent his voice to the next animated film by Michel Hazanavicius, will finally be replaced by another actor. His agent, Bertrand de Labbey, also revealed to us that “in the current context”, the actor “has decided to no longer work”.
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