Actress Judith Godrèche announced Tuesday on Instagram that she had received a “prior notice of indictment” following a complaint filed by director Jacques Doillon, whom she accuses of sexual assault.
The actress is in shock. Judith Godrèche revealed on Instagram this Tuesday evening that she had received a “prior notice of indictment” following a complaint filed by filmmaker Jacques Doillon, whom she accuses of sexual assault. “When you cry at home after receiving a notice of indictment for defamation linked to the complaint filed by your attacker,” she posted in an Instagram story. “I have not counted the number of complaints for rape and sexual assault filed against Jacques Doillon. I know mine is prescribed. But his defamation complaint is not,” she wrote. “The indictment, in this case, is automatic. But still…,” she continued in a post, emphasizing that in France, complaints for defamation automatically trigger indictments.
“When I received this document, I thought of the letter that he (Jacques Doillon, editor’s note) had sent me to my parents. In which he compared himself to a pig. A jealous pig of Benoît Jacquot. I was 15 years old. So that was the last time he wrote to me. And I spent a lifetime repainting the room pink – a room in which no one is sued for defamation, because no one files a complaint for rape (…) This life in pink is different from the life I live. But at least my life today tells the truth,” she confided.
In February, Judith Godrèche publicly accused filmmaker Benoît Jacquot of rape and then Jacques Doillon of sexual assault, sparking a new #MeToo wave in French cinema and becoming an important figure in the fight against sexual violence. In an Instagram post, she accused the filmmaker of “filming with children (…) with whom he sleeps.” Which earned him a complaint for defamation.
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The actress accuses Jacques Doillon of “putting his fingers in her pants” during tests for a film released in 1989. She was then 15 years old and was in a relationship with Benoît Jacquot.
An investigation was launched by the Paris public prosecutor's office for rape of a minor under 15 years old by a person in authority, rape, violence by a partner, and sexual assault on a minor over 15 years old by a person in authority, after a complaint filed by Judith Godrèche . The two filmmakers were interviewed at the beginning of July by the minor protection brigade.
As AFP recalls, Jacques Doillon's lawyer, Me Marie Dosé, denounced in July the attack on her client's presumption of innocence and the framework of his hearing. Jacques Doillon “should have been heard within the framework of a free hearing in view of the age of the facts, their prescription acquired for more than two decades, and the inevitable classification without further action which will close this investigation”, had underlined Me Dosé.
