Understanding everything about Depardieu's trial for sexual assault

Prosecuted for sexual assault and violence against two women during filming in 2021, Gérard Depardieu was due to appear this Monday before the Paris criminal court. He will ultimately be absent due to his “state of health”. A look back at the questions surrounding this expected trial.

Dans Green Shutters (Jean Becker, 2022), disappointing adaptation of a novel by Simenon, Gérard Depardieu overplayed the sacred monster aging and consumed by alcohol. This Monday, October 28, at 1:30 p.m., it is in his own role, that of an aging sacred monster weighed down by business, that the 75-year-old actor was to appear before the 10^e criminal chamber of the Paris Judicial Court. But after initially saying that the actor “heard” attend the hearing, his lawyer Jérémie Assous announced Monday on franceinfo that he was going to request the dismissal, due to “state of health” of his client. “Gérard Depardieu is extremely affected and unfortunately his doctors forbid him from attending the hearing, which is why he will request a postponement to a later date so that he can be present”said the lawyer, adding that he wanted “express oneself” on the facts, which he disputes.

Over the past six years, around twenty women have testified to similar actions and other complaints, including one for rape, are currently being investigated. Presumed innocent, Gérard Depardieu, whose long career marks a forced break, denies the facts with which he is accused. In an open letter to Figaroin October 2023, he had certainly admitted to having been all his life “provocative, overflowing, sometimes rude”, never again « a rapist nor a predator “. After the world of cinema was torn apart over it, through stands, a collective of one hundred and fifty personalities took up their pen last January, in Liberation, to remind that “Sacred monsters do not exist. There are only ordinary men who have been given all the rights.” While waiting for the law to express itself, and perhaps justice through it, a look back at the Depardieu affairs.

What will the Paris court judge?

The hearing will focus on accusations of sexual assault made by two women after the filming of the film The green shutters, by Jean Becker, in 2021. One of the two alleged victims, a film decorator, filed a complaint in February 2024 for sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexist outrages that occurred during filming. At Mediapart, she detailed how the actor would have “caught with brutality”, then he would have “knead the waist, the stomach, going up to [ses] breasts”, before Gérard Depardieu's bodyguards intervened. He also allegedly held “obscene remarks”.

“My client is waiting for justice to establish that Gérard Depardieu is a serial sexual assaulter,” his lawyer, Me Carine Durrieu Diebolt, told AFP. “The witnesses and evidence he produces will demonstrate that he is only the target of false accusations,” retorted Me Assous, Depardieu’s defender. The actor will also be judged for sexual violence denounced in a complaint by another woman, an assistant director on the same feature film. He faces up to five years in prison.

“I always heard [Gérard Depardieu] make sexual, serious comments » but his behavior “very, very seriously worse, with the permission of the profession which pays him for that, and which covers his crimes”, declared for her part Anouk Grinberg, her partner in Green Shutters. In an interview with AFP, the actress revealed by Bertrand Blier assured: “When film producers hire Depardieu, they know they are hiring an aggressor. »

What other complaints are pending?

In 2018, the young actress Charlotte Arnould was the first to file a complaint, for two rapes allegedly occurring in the actor's private mansion. First closed without further action less than a year later, for insufficiently characterized facts, the investigation was reopened in March 2020, after the young woman filed a complaint with the establishment of a civil party. Justice has decided to put Gérard Depardieu back under investigation for rape and sexual assault. The latter requested its annulment, without success, arguing in his defense: “There has never been any coercion, violence or protest between us. » Last August, the Paris prosecutor's office requested a trial for rape and sexual assault against him. The decision is now in the hands of the investigating judge in charge of the case.

What are the other testimonies?

On April 11, 2023, Mediapart, in a long investigation, published the testimonies of thirteen women who accused Depardieu of sexual violence. In July 2023, France Inter broadcast two other testimonies of sexual assault, those of a staged assistant and a technician. The actress Hélène Darras in turn filed a complaint, on September 10, 2023, for sexual assault on the set of Disco in 2007. The complaint will be closed for limitation. In mid-December of the same year, the Spanish journalist and writer Ruth Baza filed a complaint in Spain: she accused Gérard Depardieu of having raped her in 1995. Another investigation is also underway, in Paris, after the complaint of a former film assistant accusing Gérard Depardieu of sexual assault in 2014.

Where is the matter? Further investigation ?

On December 7, 2023, Further investigation, the France 2 investigative magazine broadcast astonishing images, filmed five years earlier, in North Korea. We see the actor, in the company of the writer and director Yann Moix, multiplying the remarks of a sexual and misogynistic nature, in particular towards a little girl on horseback. The Minister of Culture at the time, Rima Abdul-Malak, then denounced comments which “shame on France”, before being disavowed by the President of the Republic. Emmanuel Macron indeed welcomes a “huge actor” Who “makes France proud” and evokes “a manhunt”. Gérard Depardieu's family also denounces “a cabal” and Yann Moix, a reassembly “fraudulent” of his images.

In an attempt to put an end to the controversy, France Télévisions subsequently appointed a bailiff responsible for examining the footage from the cameras that recorded the sequence: he validated the journalists' investigation. Then Gérard Depardieu took the case to court. As revealed Telerama On October 18, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered that an expert organize the viewing of the recordings with the different parties. The Parisian, after consulting the twenty-two page expert report, published on October 21 its damning conclusions for the actor, the bailiff ruling out, supported by images from several cameras, that Depardieu could speak of another rider than the child.