Following the complaints filed earlier this year by actress Judith Godrèche for rape of a 15-year-old minor against Jacques Doillon and Benoît Jacquot, the two filmmakers were interviewed by investigators this Monday morning as part of a police custody. The two men, who deny these accusations, arrived at the Regional Directorate of the Judicial Police (DRPJ) in Paris around 9:30 a.m.
Benoît Jacquot “will finally be able to express himself before the courts”, reacted his counsel Ms. Julia Minkowski, who denounced “questionable” police custody. “A free hearing should have been decided,” she added. For Me Marie Dosé, lawyer for Jacques Doillon, “none of the legal criteria can justify this measure” of police custody “36 years” after the facts denounced by Judith Godrèche.
The two lawyers denounced the “attacks on the presumption of innocence” of their clients and the media coverage of these measures. These police custody periods could lead to confrontations between the directors and some of their accusers, including Judith Godrèche. On Instagram, the actress shared a “Story”, showing her young alongside Benoît Jacquot: “I don’t know if I have the strength but I will have it. I will have it, I will have the strength for her”, she wrote. The actress’s lawyer, Laure Heinich, did not wish to comment, recalling the secrecy of the investigation.
A “story of violence, of control”
Judith Godrèche had filed a complaint against Benoît Jacquot, with whom she had had a relationship when she was only 14 years old and he was 25 years older. In recent months, Judith Godrèche had mentioned an “awareness” of this “relationship of control”, the nature of which she gradually described through different media. “It’s a story of violence, a story of control,” she described, after filing a complaint against him for rape of a minor.
The actress also denounced sexual violence allegedly committed by Jacques Doillon when she was a teenager. The actress had starred in his film “The 15-Year-Old Girl”, released in 1989. According to her account, the director changed the casting and the script to shoot a sex scene with the actress while she was still a teenager.
She also accuses him of abusing her in private. “What happened in Jane’s house (Birkin, his companion at the time), in Doillon’s office, no one saw him,” she explained, adding that she had never yet recounted these alleged facts.
