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Gérard Depardieu will be tried for alleged sexual assaults on a film set, according to French prosecutors.
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The French Prosecutor’s Office has announced that the actor Gerard Depardieu will face a criminal trial in October for the alleged sexual assaults in 2021 of two women on the set of a film.
This follows news this Monday that the 75-year-old actor had been detained by police for questioning in Paris.
He lawyer by Depardieu, Christian Saint-Palaisdeclined to comment to reporters other than to say that the actor was no longer in custody.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the actor was “summoned to appear before the criminal court” after questioning.
The trial will begin in October “for the sexual assaults that were probably committed in September 2021” against “two victims, on the set of the film The green blindss, according to the statement. He did not name the alleged victims.
The French press reported that a 53-year-old decorator reported that Depardieu grabbed her and kneaded her waist, stomach and breasts during the filming of ‘The Green Blinds’, according to the women’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu Diebolt, “he felt completely helpless, unable to escape this trap.”
The actor previously denied the accusations against him in a open letter published in Le Figaro in October 2023.
He denounced a lynching orchestrated by what he called “the media court”: “I can no longer accept what I have been hearing and reading about myself for the last few months. I thought I didn’t care, but no, I don’t care. Everything is affecting, he wrote. I have never, ever abused a woman“.
Dismissed cases
The actress Hélène Darras filed another case, but Prosecutors dismissed it for have prescribed.
Depardieu has also been accused of more than a dozen other women of harassing, groping or sexually assaulting them. He was charged with preliminary charges of rape and sexual assault in 2020 following accusations by actress Charlotte Arnould.
In that case, the investigating judge completed his investigation on April 17 and transferred the file to the Paris prosecutor’s office “to review and determine the next steps of the process,” the prosecutor’s office reported yesterday.
Depardieu was long considered a national icon in France, and the case has divided the French cultural scene. He has been a global ambassador of French cinema and enjoyed international fame with several roles in Hollywood.
Additional sources • Le Parisien
