The facts date back to September 10, 2021. Amélie - the first name given to her by
Mediapart
to preserve her anonymity - allegedly suffered a sexual assault on the set of the film
Les
Volets vertes
, by Jean Becker, in Paris.
The 53-year-old decorator testifies to inappropriate gestures and serious jokes, then explains to the investigative site that she was “brutally caught”.
The 75-year-old actor allegedly “kneaded her waist, her stomach, going up to her breasts” before being arrested by one of his bodyguards.
Facts which would not be prescribed, recalled the lawyer of the one who decided to file a complaint against Gérard Depardieu for “sexual assault”.
To discover
The keys to supporting women in their working lives
According to
Médiapart
, his testimony is also added to another.
That of Sarah, 33 years old, third assistant director on this same film, who accuses the interpreter of Cyrano de Bergerac of having touched her “chest and buttocks” twice during this filming.
Since Charlotte Arnould's complaint in 2018 and the actor's indictment in 2020, the list of testimonies has grown.
Charlotte Arnould's complaint
The case took place at the end of August 2018, therefore, when a young actress named Charlotte Arnould, 24, went to the police station to file a complaint against Gérard Depardieu, giant of French cinema.
The actor was 70 years old at the time.
The latter describes having been 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 the opening of an indictment for “rape” and “sexual assault”
.
A year later, the Paris prosecutor's office announced that "the investigating chamber considers that there are, at this stage, serious or consistent evidence which justifies Gérard Depardieu remaining indicted."
A first victory for Charlotte Arnould who has declared “living hell” for several years to the media.
And then nothing more, until the first
Médiapart
investigation in April 2023, which led to a real explosion.
Here, it is not yet a question of complaints, but rather of establishing the hostile climate for the women gravitating around Gérard Depardieu.
In total, 13 testimonies support the accusations of Charlotte Arnould, now surrounded and supported - by actress Anouk Grinberg, in particular.
The investigative site adds that the story of one of them, a foreign actress, was transmitted to French justice a month earlier.
The latter denounced acts of sexual assault dating back to 2014, during the filming of
Big House
in New York.
A few days after the publication of the incriminating article, the Paris prosecutor's office declared to
Libération
: “This does not mean that all (
these testimonies, Editor's note
) will have a legal outcome, but we will have taken it into account.
Everyone who wanted to be heard had the opportunity to be heard.”
Also read “In front of him, I am paralyzed”: the latest sensitive revelations on the Gérard Depardieu affair
That of Hélène Darras
Among these people is the actress Hélène Darras.
In the columns of
Mediapart
, she declares having been sexually assaulted by Gérard Depardieu on the set of the film
Disco
, in 2007. The actress, who landed a small role, must give the answer to him as well as to Franck Dubosc.
But off-camera, the Valseuses
actor
shocks her.
“He looks at me like I’m a piece of meat.
I have an ultra-tight dress, he pulls me closer to him by the waist, then he runs his hand over my hips, over my buttocks…” she declares.
After telling her story for the first time, she decided to take the case to court five months later, in September 2023, thus constituting the second complaint against the actor.
If the facts are prescribed, she will say “don't care” and justify this action to gain credibility.
Two months earlier, in July 2023, another accuser gave her testimony on France Inter, without going to court.
Assistant on the set of a TV film in 2015, she remembered the harsh and vulgar remarks about her physique as well as the sexual propositions coming from Depardieu.
One day, forced to stay in her room, she was “taken hostage”, the latter “dropping his pants in front of her” to “show her his penis”.
And another technician said, as
Libération
reports : “I turned my back on Gérard Depardieu to tell the assistant director that I was ready.
I felt his big hand, his big hand in my crotch, grab my crotch with will, letting out a big gravelly laugh.
I was liquefied, petrified.
“That’s the moment he chose to humiliate me.”
The suicide of Emmanuelle Debever
And then, comes the tragic December 6, 2023, the day when actress Emmanuelle Debever threw herself into the Seine.
She was the first to publicly accuse Gérard Depardieu, and her suicide hit the world of cinema like a big blow.
We then remember her message, posted on Facebook in 2019 through which she repudiated the behavior of the actor a few months before the release of the film
Danton
, in 1982. “The sacred monster had allowed himself many things during this filming.. .Enjoying the privacy inside a carriage.
Slipping his big paw under my skirts to supposedly make me feel better.
Me, not letting myself do it,” we read in the missive.
When he died, one of the extras remembered, still speaking to
Libération
: “On this film, we had to wait a lot.
Gérard Depardieu, he waited at the bistro and he always arrived on set red-faced.
(...) I saw it done.
He passed his hand under her skirts, he tried to go up along her thigh.
She took her hand away, he put it back in, she took it out again, he put it back in.
Still laughing.
She was so young, so embarrassed.
She didn't say anything, she looked so shy.
This scene shocked me so much that I never forgot it.”
After the death of Emmanuelle Debever, at the age of 60, an investigation was opened by the Paris prosecutor's office to "research the circumstances which may have led to this death".
According to AFP, several Internet users assure that a complaint was filed by the actress in 2019, before being closed without further action.
Ruth Baza, the Spanish writer
A few days later, on December 21, 2023, a woman in turn pushed open the doors of a police station.
This time it is a Spanish woman, the journalist and writer Ruth Baza.
She claims to have been raped in October 1995 in Paris, while she interviewed the actor for the specialized magazine
Cinemanía
.
At that time, she was 23, he was 46. “When he arrived, he threw everything on an armchair, the magazine that I had given him and I almost got his motorcycle helmet on me.
He was very violent and very aggressive,” she explains immediately at the microphone of RTL.
“He despised me, I felt humiliated and I burst into tears,” she continues before swearing that she had been caught and then raped: “I can’t move, I can’t escape, I can’t talk.
I find myself stuck in a situation that I don’t understand.”
At the end of December, it was Sophie Marceau who added yet another stone to the sad edifice.
In
Paris Match
, the leading actress of French cinema says: “I said publicly at the time that I could not stand her attitude, which was rude and very inappropriate.
A lot of people turned against me, making me look like a little pest.”
The actress played with him in the film
Police
in 1985.
Finally, on January 9, 2024, a 24-year-old assistant filed a fifth complaint for “sexual assault on a vulnerable person by someone abusing the authority of their position”.
The attack allegedly occurred in March 2014 while she was working with the actor on the film
The Magician and the Siamese,
by Jean-Pierre Mocky.
After going for the first time to her private mansion in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the woman who calls herself Pauline says she was first “snubbed” even though she was accompanied by several colleagues.
“He growled in my ear while clinging to me.
After a while, he turned his back on me and said he didn’t have time and that I had to come back within a week.”
Done.
A few days later, the young woman went to the house again, alone.
While he is surrounded by three people, Depardieu tells him to go upstairs, for more peace of mind.
There, she claims to have been pushed into a cupboard, the latter “grabbing her buttocks while shouting: ‘Howl!
Howl!
It’s going to make them cum down there.” A preliminary investigation was opened in Paris on February 16, recalls
BFM TV
.
The story of decorator Amélie to
Médiapart
, this Saturday, February 25, and her freshly filed complaint thus restart the machine and shed light on the wave of accusations against the actor.
Several women who had previously never testified also claimed to have had the trigger after an article by the latter in Le
Figaro
, on October 1, 2023. “Never, ever have I abused a woman”, declared the one who still remains presumed innocent.