Jacques Doillon, accused of rape, was placed under the status of assisted witness

It is one of the main legal cases caused by accusations of sexual and gender-based violence in French cinema. Summoned by an investigating judge on Friday December 6, Jacques Doillon was not indicted following his first appearance interrogation, but placed under the status – more favorable for him – of assisted witness. The Paris prosecutor's office, which revealed this information in the evening, did not provide further details.

The director of Little Criminal (1990) and Ponette (1996), 80 years old, was interviewed at the beginning of July by the juvenile protection brigade of the Paris judicial police in the context of police custody from which he emerged without being prosecuted, for medical reasons. Requested by The Worldhis lawyer, M^e Marie Dosé did not respond immediately.

The filmmaker is the target of several complaints, one of which comes from Judith Godrèche. On February 8, the actress and director publicly accused Jacques Doillon of having raped her, when she was a minor, during tests carried out for the film The Fifteen Year Old Girlreleased in 1989. The person concerned denies these facts, covered by the prescription and which he had compared to “arbitrary denunciations” and ” lies “.

A few days later, he himself filed a complaint for defamation, after an Instagram post from the actress in which the latter suggested, according to M^e Marie Dosé, as Jacques Doillon “would have “slept with children” who were in his films”. A legal action which should lead to the indictment, automatic in this case, of Judith Godrèche.

Following the testimony of Judith Godrèche, at the heart of the new #MeToo wave which has swept French cinema since the start of the year, other people denounced the behavior of Jacques Doillon. Joe Rohanne, who lived with the artist for three years and had a daughter with him, filed a complaint alleging three rapes and assault and battery, as The World told him in July, just after the filmmaker was taken into police custody. As the reported facts took place between 2009 and 2012, they are not covered by the statute of limitations.

Recorded in a notebook

Hélène M., a 44-year-old French woman who now lives in Canada, claims, for her part, to have been raped by the filmmaker in Paris in 1989, when she was only 16 years old and a high school student. An event that she had recorded in a notebook at the time, presented to investigators from the minor protection brigade. Hélène M. filed a complaint on March 27.

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