The actor, placed in police custody on Monday, will be tried in October 2024 for sexual assault.
Gérard Depardieu “will be judged in October 2024 for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021 to the detriment of two victims, on the set of the film Les Volets vertes”announced Monday evening, the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The actor saw himself “submit a summons to the criminal court”, he specifies. His custody, which began in the morning, had just been lifted. The sacred monster of French cinema, aged 75, had to respond in particular to the accusations of a film decorator.
“I’m going to plant my big parasol on you.”
According to the complainant’s account, relayed by BFMTV, the actor blocked her in a corridor between her thighs, touching her on the waist, breasts and buttocks. He then allegedly made the following remarks to her: “I’m going to plant my big parasol in your….”
This 53-year-old mother says that a “Wolf Trap” closed on her that day with a “phenomenal strength”to the point that it required the intervention of a third party to free it.
The actor would then have apologized, as follows, under pressure from the film crew: “I apologize since you have to apologize…”
But he would have subsequently treated her on several occasions with “slut”. Another woman explains having suffered sexual touching in March 2014, on the sidelines of the filming of a short film by Jean-Pierre Mocky, The Magician and the Siamese.
“His hands all over my body”
According to his statements, in Le Courrier de l’Ouest, the actor touched his buttocks while he received the team in his private hotel, rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris, for a preparatory meeting.
On the first day of filming, March 29, 2014, he reportedly posed “his hands all over [son] body”, by addressing him with words “indecent”relates this assistant, aged 24 at the time.
The President, the statue and the podium
Gérard Depardieu, whose behavior is questioned, at the same time, by actresses, like Anouk Grinberg, faces other procedures.
Since December 2020, he has been indicted for rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould.
In Spain, recalls Le Monde, Gérard Depardieu is also the target of a complaint from the writer Ruth Baza who accuses him of rape.
He denounces a “lynching”
The complaint filed by Hélène Darras, alleging sexual assault during filming in 2007, is filed for prescription.
In October 2023, the actor defended himself in Le Figaro, denouncing a “lynching”.
“All this gets to me. Worse still, turns me off,” he said. Two months later, on December 7, 2023, he found himself at the center of a new controversy. Complément d’investigation broadcasts on France 2 images shot by Yann Moix, during a trip to North Korea in 2018.
The shocking video from Complementary investigation
He appears to be making comments of a sexual nature about a little girl. France Télévisions then removed its films from its programming. Fictions in which he plays one of the main roles are also banned from Swiss public television.
In Paris, his wax statue was removed from the Grévin museum.
On December 20, Gérard Depardieu received, on the other hand, significant support. Emmanuel Macron denounces, on France 5, “a manhunt”. His words, praising a “huge actor”, Who “makes France proud”however, earned the head of state criticism from the ranks of feminists.
Five days later, on Christmas Day, a column appeared in Le Figaro calling for the presumption of innocence and not to “to erase” the actor. A poisoned gift for the actor. Several signatories quickly retracted, in particular because of the sulphurous profile of its author. The effect is disastrous.
And a counter-tribunal was signed in response by 600 artists.
Meeting Monday around sexual violence at the hospital
This detention of Gérard Depardieu comes at the very moment when the Metoo movement, which has shaken many sectors, from the media to the army, is relaunched in the cinema after new accusations from Judith Godrèche pushing the 7th Art to further protect the minors on set.
The Minister of Health, Frédéric Valletoux, met on Monday with interns and other representatives of the hospital, in turn splashed by the scandal.
