Indicted for rape, Depardieu disputes elements of the investigation

French actor Gérard Depardieu, against whom a trial for rape is required, will challenge elements of the investigation targeting him on Thursday before the Paris Court of Appeal, AFP learned on Wednesday from sources close to the case.

He is charged with rape and sexual assault in August 2018 against actress Charlotte Arnould. He was then 69 years old, she 19. Gérard Depardieu vigorously denies it. In March 2022, the court of appeal confirmed his indictment, which he requested to be annulled. This time, his defense filed two appeals, which will be examined Thursday afternoon.

The first requests the nullity of a testimony from an extra, collected by the investigative site “Mediapart” then by e-mail by the investigators, the woman living abroad, according to one of the close sources of the file.

In December 2014, during a scene from the filming of “Big House”, directed by Jean-Emmanuel Godart, “without warning, Gérard Depardieu put his hand under my dress”, she told “Mediapart”. “He tried to pull my panties aside and finger me. If I had not stopped him, he would have succeeded,” she assured.

Asked by AFP, Charlotte Arnould’s lawyer highlighted the similarity of this scene with her client’s testimony. “His modus operandi is his hand in his pants”, facilitating “surprise rape”, accused Me Carine Durrieu-Diebolt.

The actor’s counsel, Jérémie Assous, refused to respond to AFP.

The second request concerns the rushes of the program “Complément d’investigation”, broadcast at the end of 2023 on the public channel France 2, the subject of a lively controversy which precipitated the fall of the actor.

Gérard Depardieu, on a trip to North Korea in 2018, made multiple misogynistic remarks and made others of a sexual nature when a little girl on a horse appeared in the image. “If he ever gallops, she enjoys,” he says in particular.

A fraudulent set-up, according to its defense, which took the case to civil justice, which the production disputes.

Gérard Depardieu also ordered the magistrate responsible for investigating the rapes of Charlotte Arnould to seize these rushes to decide, among other things, on the authenticity of the montage.

The judge refused at the end of July, according to another source close to the case. If she had asked France TV and the production company Hikari to communicate the rushes, she explained that she could not force them to do so, because she is only responsible for investigating the accusations of rape. Depardieu appealed.

Complaints and accusations have multiplied over the past six years against the sacred monster of French cinema, with a loud-mouthed and outrageous temperament, a lover of gritty and misogynistic outbursts.

The actor is due to appear at the end of March for sexual assault in September 2021 during the filming of “Green Shutters”, accusations which he also contests.