Gérard Depardieu, charged with rape and sexual assaults

French actor Gérard Depardieu poses at the 'photocall' during the promotion of the second season of 'Marseille', in 2018ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT / AFP

French actor Gérard Depardieu has been indicted for rape and sexual assault following a complaint by a young actress in 2018. The case was initially shelved, but the plaintiff managed to have it reopened last summer and the charges were formally brought to him in December , although it has now been known.

• Gérard Depardieu, 70 years of cinema and scandals

French judicial sources have confirmed to EL PAÍS the formalization of the charges, in an appearance held on December 16 in Paris, and pointed out that, despite this, Depardieu "is not subject to any measure" of control and remains free.

The artist's lawyer, Hervé Témime, has regretted in statements to the Agence France Presse (AFP), which has advanced this Tuesday the unexpected turn of this case, that the imputation of his client for crimes that Depardieu, of 72 years, has denied from the beginning.

The case against Cyrano de Bergerac's interpreter began when a twenty-year-old actress, whose identity has not been disclosed, filed a complaint in the south of France at the end of August 2018 against Depardieu, whom she accused of having raped and sexually assaulted her in two sometimes at his home in Paris, during the first fortnight of that month.

According to AFP, although at one point it was said that the young woman had met Depardieu in the framework of rehearsals for a play, a source close to the file specified that the actor was a friend of the young woman's family and the case did not have nothing to do with the profession of the actor and the alleged victim.

A year later, the Paris prosecution announced that the case was archived.

"The numerous investigations carried out within the framework of this procedure have not made it possible to describe the violations reported in all their constituent elements," she explained in June 2019. However, in August 2020, the young woman managed to have the investigation reopened, after presenting a claim as a civil party.

Although there is no guarantee that this route, provided for by French law, will end in a formal accusation - as has happened in this case - leading to trial, the truth is that it entails that an investigating judge automatically opens a judicial investigation, with which the case is retaken de facto.

• The abuse of a minor that shakes the French intellectual elite

The Depardieu case is part of the effects in France of the feminist movement Me Too that emerged at the end of 2017 in the United States, where it ended with the conviction of the film producer Harvey Weinstein.

Although in the French country the movement was slow to start, in recent years, numerous accusations against other personalities, both artistic and political, have since caused a change in attitude towards sexual abuse, especially against minors.

Among the filmmakers accused of rape or sexual assault in France are the filmmakers Luc Besson and Christophe Ruggia, as well as, more recently, the president of the National Film Center, Dominique Boutonnat, also charged this month with sexual assault and attempted rape after a complaint filed by his 22-year-old godson.

Since the book

The Big Family

was published at the beginning of the year

, where Camille Kouchner, daughter of the famous former French Minister Bernard Kouchner, reveals the alleged sexual abuse to which her twin brother was subjected by the well-known French political scientist Olivier Duhamel, they have been known other accusations of abuse of Gallic personalities, such as that of Coline Berry-Rojtman, who at the end of January denounced her father, actor Richard Berry, for alleged incest committed in the mid-eighties.

Harassment workshops for filmmakers

The scandal of sexual abuse has splashed the best of French cinema.

In an attempt to revoke this image, the National Film Center (CNC), which brings together the professionals of the union and distributes financial aid, imposes from the beginning of the year as a condition that every company or producer that aspires to this aid meets a series of “Obligations to prevent sexual harassment”.

The main measure is a mandatory training course on the subject that, up to 2023, up to 9,000 professionals in the union should follow, according to the CNC.

In addition, the agency requires that in workplaces, including filming, there is an "information device" on sexual harassment and its sanctions, as well as that companies in the sector create cells and mechanisms for listening and reporting.