Gérard Depardieu will face a felony trial in October over the alleged sexual assaults of two ladies on the set of a movie in 2021, prosecutors have introduced.
Depardieu, 75, who beforehand has denied any wrongdoing, was questioned for a number of hours on Monday by officers at a police station within the 14th arrondissement of Paris.
The Paris public prosecutor’s workplace later stated in an announcement that the actor has been “summoned to look earlier than the felony court docket”.
A trial will begin in October “for sexual assaults more likely to have been dedicated in September 2021” in opposition to “two victims, on the set of the movie Les Volets Verts [The Green Shutters]”, the assertion stated.
Depardieu’s lawyer, Christian Saint-Palais, on Monday night confirmed the questioning was over as he spoke to reporters as he left the station. “The police custody is over. He’s not held within the police station,” he stated.
The primary lady, a set designer, stated Depardieu assaulted her when she was a member of the crew of Les Volets Verts. She filed a proper grievance to the police in February.
The 53-year-old lady advised the investigative web site Mediapart earlier this yr that Depardieu first made obscene feedback to her, then later assaulted her as she stepped away from the set and right into a hall inside a Paris mansion the place the movie was being shot.
She stated he grabbed her “brutally” and closed his legs round her with a “phenomenal pressure” so she couldn’t transfer, then grabbed all components of her physique as he made express feedback.
She stated she felt as if she was in a entice, panicking and struggling to breathe. She stated she felt herself pulled backwards and another person pulling Depardieu, and stated his bodyguards had pulled him off her.
Depardieu, by his legal professionals, has denied all allegations.
In 2020 police positioned Depardieu below formal investigation for rape and sexual assault in one other case, after the actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her at his Paris dwelling in 2018.
Arnould, who went to the police greater than 5 years in the past, accused Depardieu of rape and sexual assault on two events at his dwelling in Paris in 2018, when she was 22 and Depardieu, a good friend of her father, was 70.
Arnould advised a documentary final yr that she had been anorexic on the time of the alleged assault and it had been “absolute horror”.
In an open letter to Le Figaro in October, Depardieu denied all allegations, saying any encounter with Arnould had been consensual. He stated he was the sufferer of a lynching orchestrated by a “media court docket”, and wrote: “By no means, ever have I abused a girl.”
One other sexual assault grievance was filed final yr by Hélène Darras, an actor, who stated Depardieu groped and propositioned her throughout a 2007 movie shoot. The case has been dropped for having been previous the time restrict for bringing prices.
Depardieu, certainly one of France’s best-known actors, has appeared in additional than 170 movies and gained worldwide fame with English-language roles.
Feminists and politicians on the left reacted angrily in December after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described Depardieu – who was then below formal investigation for rape and dealing with contemporary scrutiny over sexist feedback filmed in a TV documentary – because the goal of a “manhunt”.
“You’ll by no means see me take part in a manhunt … I hate that kind of factor,” Macron advised the broadcaster France 5 when requested about the potential of stripping Depardieu of a state award after the documentary confirmed footage of sexist and inappropriate behaviour by the actor.
Macron stated: “I’m a fantastic admirer of Gérard Depardieu; he’s an immense actor … a genius of his artwork. He has made France identified throughout the entire world. And, I say this as president and as a citizen, he makes France proud.”
Macron advised a press convention the next month that he regretted not having careworn “the significance of the phrases of ladies who’re victims of this kind of violence”.
