Depardieu case. a look back at the sexual assault allegations that have engulfed the actor

Facts are dated September 10, 2021. Amelie – her name Mediapart: to preserve his anonymity, was allegedly sexually assaulted on the set of the film THE: Green shutters, by Jean Becker, in Paris. The 53-year-old decorator testifies about inappropriate gestures and serious jokes, then explains to the investigative website that he was “brutally raped”. The 75-year-old actor allegedly “faded his waist, stomach, going up to his breasts” before being arrested by one of the bodyguards. The lawyer who decided to file a complaint against Gerard Depardieu for “sexual harassment” recalled facts that will not be defined.

Agreed Mediapart:, his testimony is also added to another. Sarah, 33, the third assistant director of the same film, who accuses Cyrano de Bergerac’s translator of touching her “breast and butt” twice during this shoot. After Charlotte Arnold’s complaint in 2018 and the actor’s accusation in 2020, the list of testimonies grew.

Charlotte Arnold’s Complaint

The incident took place at the end of August 2018, when a 24-year-old young actress named Charlotte Arnoul went to the police station to file a complaint against the French film giant Gerard Depardieu. The actor was 70 years old at that time. The latter says that he was raped twice: on August 7 and then on August 13 in the actor’s private hotel. After her first complaint was dismissed, she repeated it in 2020, this time leading to indictments for “rape” and “sexual harassment”.. A year later, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that “the investigative chamber considers that at this stage there is serious or consistent evidence that justifies the continuation of Gerard Depardieu as an accused”. The first victory for Charlotte Arnold, who has declared to the media “living hell” for several years.

And then nothing more until its first investigation Mediapart: In April 2023, which leads to a real explosion. Here it is still not a matter of complaints, but of establishing a hostile atmosphere for women surrounding Gerard Depardieu. In total, 13 testimonies support the accusations of Charlotte Arnold, who is now surrounded and defended, in particular, by the actress Anouk Greenberg. The investigative site adds that the story of one of them, a foreign actress, was handed over to French justice a month ago. The latter condemned the sexual assaults that took place during the 2014 filming Big house in New York. A few days after the publication of the indictment, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced Set free “This does not mean that all (these testimonials, Editor’s Note) will have a legal outcome, but we will take it into account. Everyone who wanted to listen got a chance to listen.”

Helen Darras

Actress Helen Daras is among those people. in the columns of Mediapart:she claims that she was sexually assaulted by Gerard Depardieu on the set of the film. Disco, the actress who got a small role in 2007 has to answer to him, as well as to Frank Dubose. But off camera, an actor Waltz the shock. “He looks at me like I’m a piece of meat. I have an extremely tight dress, he pulls me closer with his waist, then he runs his hand over my hips, over my butt…” she declares. After first telling her story, she decided to take the case to court five months later, in September 2023, thus becoming the second complaint against the actor. If the facts are established, he will say “don’t care” and justify this action in order to gain credibility.

Two months earlier, in July 2023, another accuser testified against France Inter without going to court. In 2015, an assistant on the set of a TV movie recalled harsh and vulgar comments about her body, as well as sexual advances from Depardieu. One day he was forced to stay in his room, he was “taken hostage”, the latter “dropped his pants in front of him” to “show him his penis”. And another technician tells his story, as reported Set free “I turned away from Gerard Depardieu to tell the assistant director that I was ready. I felt his big hand, his big hand in my crotch willingly grabbing my core let out a big pebbly laugh. I was liquefied, petrified. “That’s when he chose to humiliate me.”

The suicide of Emmanuel Debever

And then comes the tragic December 6, 2023, the day actress Emmanuelle Debever threw herself into the sea. He was the first to publicly accuse Gerard Depardieu, and his suicide hit the film world like a big blow. Then we recall his 2019 Facebook message in which he denied the actor’s behavior a few months before the film’s release. Danton, in 1982. “The holy monster allowed himself many things during this filming… Taking advantage of the intimacy inside the carriage. Slipping his big paw under my skirts to supposedly make me feel better. Me, not allowing myself to do that,” we read in the missive. In his death, one of the extras will remember, always close Set free “We had to wait a long time for this film. Gerard Depardieu waited at the bistro and always appeared red-faced on set. (…) I saw it done. He ran his hand under her skirt, tried to climb up her thigh. He took his hand out, put it in again, took it out again, put it in again. He is still laughing. He was so young, so confused. She didn’t say anything, she looked so shy. This scene shocked me so much that I never forgot it.’ Following the death of Emmanuel Debever at the age of 60, the Paris prosecutor’s office launched an investigation to “investigate the circumstances that could have led to this death”. According to AFP, several netizens claim that a complaint was filed by the actress in 2019 before further proceedings were closed.

Rut Baza, Spanish writer

A few days later, on December 21, 2023, a woman in turn pushed open the doors of the police station. This time it is the Spanish woman, journalist and writer Ruth Baza. She claims that she was raped in October 1995 in Paris while she interviewed the actor for a specialized magazine. Cinema mania. He was 23 at the time, she was 46. “When he came, he threw everything on the armchair, the magazine I had given him, and I almost got on his motorcycle helmet. He was very violent and very aggressive,” he explains directly to RTL’s microphone. “He despised me, I felt humiliated and I cried,” she continues, before swearing that she was grabbed and then raped. “I can’t move, I can’t run, I can’t talk. I’m in a situation I don’t understand.” At the end of December, it was Sophie Marceau who added another stone to the sad building. In Paris gameThe leading actress of French cinema says: “I publicly said then that I could not stand his attitude, which was rude and very inappropriate. A lot of people turned against me, making me look like a little pest.” The actress acted with him in the film PoliceIn 1985

Finally, on January 9, 2024, the 24-year-old assistant filed a fifth complaint for “sexual harassment of a defenseless person by a person abusing the authority of their position.” The assault allegedly took place in March 2014 while she was working on a film with the actor The Magician and the Siamese By Jean-Pierre Mock. After first going to her mansion in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the woman, who calls herself Polly, says she was first “squeezed out” even though she was accompanied by several colleagues. “He growled in my ear, clinging to me. After a while he turned away from me and said he didn’t have time and that I should come back in a week.” Done. A few days later, the young woman went home again, alone. While he is surrounded by the three, Depardieu tells him to go upstairs for more peace of mind. There, she claims, she was pushed into a closet, the latter “grabbing her butt, yelling: No. That’s going to make them end up there.” A preliminary investigation was started in Paris on February 16, he reminds. BFM TV .

The story with the decorator Amelie Mediapart:, this Saturday, February 25, and his newly filed complaint thus restarted the machine and shed light on the wave of allegations against the actor. Several women who had never testified before also claimed to have clicked in the latter’s column Figaro October 1, 2023: “I have never, ever abused a woman,” declared the man who has always been presumed innocent.