French directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon are being questioned under police custody in connection with complaints filed by Judith Godrèche. The latter reacted to the news on her Instagram account.
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12:02 – “I’m crying”: Judith Godrèche reacts to police custody
On her Instagram account, Judith Godrèche reacted in a story to the custody of Jacques Doillon and Benoît Jacquot, whom she accuses of sexual violence, and to the potential confrontation which must take place with the two directors: “I’m crying. My eyes are no longer eyes. Of all that. Of all that. I don’t know if I have the strength, but I will have it.
11:37 – Police custody denounced by Jacques Doillon’s lawyer
Just like Benoît Jacquot’s lawyer, Me Marie Dosé, who defends Jacques Doillon, criticized the choice to place her client in police custody. “None of the legal criteria can justify this measure 36 years after the facts” denounced, she believes in comments reported by AFP this Monday. She considers in a press release that her client “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 dismissal of proceedings which will close this investigation”.
11:05 – Police custody “criticizable” for Benoît Jacquot’s lawyer
Benoît Jacquot arrived at the Regional Directorate of the Paris Judicial Police accompanied by his lawyer, Me Julia Minkowski. The latter welcomed the fact that her client “will finally be able to speak before the courts”. However, she denounced “questionable” police custody to the AFP, believing that a “free hearing should have been decided.”
10:33 – Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon in police custody
French directors Jacques Doillon and Benoît Jacquot, accused of sexual violence against minors by Judith Godrèche since last February, were summoned by the Paris Minors Protection Brigade with a view to being placed in police custody, AFP tells us . The two filmmakers dispute the accusations but arrived at 9:30 a.m. accompanied by their lawyers.
Directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon were summoned by the Minors Protection Brigade to be questioned in police custody this Monday morning, AFP tells us. This follows the two complaints of sexual violence filed by Judith Godrèche last February.
The French actress accuses the first of “violent rape of a minor under 15 years old” and the second of “rape of a minor under 15 years old by a person with authority” and the second of “rape of a minor under 15 years old by a person having authority”. The two septuagenarian directors have always denied these accusations.
Publicly, Judith Godrèche and Benoît Jacquot had a six-year “relationship” from 1986 to 1992. The actress was then 14 years old when she met the 39-year-old filmmaker at a casting for the film Beggars. On the set, they became closer to the point of forming, in everyone’s eyes at least, an official “couple”. But the broadcast of a documentary about the director, in which he assumes the “transgression” of his past relationship with the one who was then a teenager, was a trigger for the actress.
In these images, Benoît Jacquot says in particular “Yes, it was a transgression. If only in the eyes of the law (…) we don’t have the right in principle, I think. A girl like her who was indeed 15 years old, and I was 40, I didn’t have the right.” On January 8, 2024, Judith Godrèche named the director on her Instagram account for the first time: “The little girl in me can no longer keep quiet about this name. His name is Benoît Jacquot. He still manipulates those who could associate their names with mine. Testify. He threatens to take me to court for defamation.”
Since then, Judith Godrèche has denounced a “perversion” and a “control” exercised by the director, to the point of filing a complaint on February 6, 2024 for “rape with violence on a minor under 15 years old”. In her testimony to the Brigade for the Protection of Minors of the Paris Judicial Police, transcribed in Le Monde, the actress and director of Icon of French cinema says that she “would have wanted Benoît to agree to be my friend, to not have me, I didn’t want his body”. “He disgusted me,” she adds. She also denounces a sometimes brutal sexual relationship with the filmmaker: “he tells me to take off my sweater, that we are going to play a sexual game. I have to stand on the stairs, with my back to him and close my eyes. He takes his belt, starts to whip me. I let him do one blow, two blows, but I can’t.” Now aged 77, Benoît Jacquot denies the accusations against him. In the columns of Le Monde, he evokes a long “loving” relationship, “devoid, according to him, of brutality and predation”.
On February 6, 2024, Judith Godrèche also filed a complaint against Jacques Doillon for “rape of a 15-year-old minor by a person in authority”. At the microphone of France Inter two days later, the actress recounts two attacks of which she says she was the victim at the hands of the ex-husband of Jane Birkin and father of Lou Doillon (in particular).
The first attack denounced by Judith Godrèche allegedly took place “in Jane Birkin’s house”. She will not give the details at the France Inter microphone. The second attack allegedly took place on the set of the film The 15 year old girl, directed by and with the same Jacques Doillon. “All of a sudden, he decides that there is a love scene, a sex scene between him and me,” she explains on France Inter. “I take off my sweater, I’m shirtless, he gropes me, makes out with me” in 45 takes. She assures that the facts would have taken place in front of Jane Birkin, then still in a relationship with the director, for whom the “situation was extremely painful”.
Jacques Doillon has always denied the accusations against him and is considering filing a complaint against the 51-year-old actress for defamation. His lawyer also denounced “ignoble” remarks made by Judith Godrèche in a press release sent to AFP. In an interview with Le Parisien on Wednesday, April 10, he assured that he had “never had an intimate relationship with Judith Godrèche” and had “never been attracted to her”. “I was living at the time with Jane (Birkin, editor’s note), with whom I was in love. Nothing happened with Judith, neither in an office nor anywhere else,” he told the daily.
Judith Godrèche filed a complaint against Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon on February 6, 2024. The following day, an investigation was opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office on February 7, 2024. It specifically concerns “the offenses of rape of a minor under 15 by a person in authority, rape, violence by a cohabitant, and sexual assault of a minor over 15 by a person in authority, all of the facts reported having taken place between 1986 and 1992”. The investigations were entrusted to the Brigade for the Protection of Minors. The two directors were summoned on July 1, 2024 with a view to being placed in police custody.
Although there is probably a statute of limitations, the acts of “violent rape of a minor under 15 years of age” are punishable by 20 years in prison. For his part, Jacques Doillon intends to file a complaint for defamation against Judith Godrèche.
Following Judith Godrèche’s complaints, other actresses spoke out against the two directors she denounces. Isild Le Besco denounces a controlling relationship exercised by Benoît Jacquot when she was 16 years old and having suffered “psychological or physical violence”. She also accuses Jacques Doillon of having refused her a role after she refused his advances. Anna Mouglalis filed a complaint against Jacques Doillon and accuses him of having forcibly kissed her in a stairwell, on the sidelines of the filming of the film A child of you in 2011.
