The actress Judith Godrèche filed a complaint on Tuesday in Paris for rape of a minor against the director Benoît Jacquot, with whom she had a relationship when she was a teenager, her lawyer Me Laure Heinich told AFP on Wednesday, confirming information of the
world.
On Tuesday, the actress filed a complaint for rape of a 15-year-old minor by a person in authority at the Minor Protection Brigade for these acts dating from the second half of the 1980s, and which are possibly time-barred.
According to
Le Monde,
Mr. Jacquot
“firmly denies the allegations and accusations of Judith Godrèche”.
Read alsoJudith Godrèche denounces the “control” of filmmaker Benoît Jacquot when she was 14 years old
The actress very recently mentioned this relationship of several years with the filmmaker 25 years her senior, in the series
Icon of French cinema
on Arte, but she had never before so explicitly questioned the director.
“The little girl in me can no longer keep silent about this name,”
she said, in a story posted on Instagram, deleted before being put back online in January, where she speaks of “control” and “perversion”.
“His name is Benoit Jacquot. He still manipulates those who might associate their names with mine. Bear witness. He threatens to take me to court for defamation,”
said the 51-year-old actress, believing that the filmmaker is “esteemed for his perversion.”
“Who has respect for BJ practices? Known to everyone for 35 years? Who endorses and validates? The agent who represents him? That he introduced me to when I was 14? Its producer? Same thing. (...) Where does this feeling of impunity come from? Everything was known. And the same people are on the maneuvers,”
she continues, saying she fears that people will “turn their backs” on her after these comments.
A speech motivated by the viewing of a documentary where Benoît Jacquot assumes the transgressive aspect of his past relationship with the teenager.
“Yes it was a transgression.
If only with regard to the law (...) we do not have the right in principle, I believe.
A girl like her who was in fact 15 years old, and I was 40, I had no right
,” we can hear her say in the documentary dated 2011.
Judith Godrèche was revealed in
Les Mendiants
de Jacquot (1988) then
La Désenchantée
(1990).
The filmmaker has built his work around actresses, stars like Isabelle Huppert or debutantes like Isild Le Besco, sister of Maïwenn, revealed at 18 in
Sade
, the first of their six films together.
“I can only film an actress if I am in love with her
,” the person said in 2009 in the newspaper
Le Figaro.
“The actresses in my films are like the women of my life [...] the flesh of my life
,” he added three years later in
Télérama.