Depardieu, 75, charged over ‘sex assaults of two women’ on set
FRENCH film star Gérard Depardieu is to stand trial over the alleged sexual assaults of two women on a film set.
The 75- year- old, who is already under investigation for multiple similar crimes including rape, was last night charged over the assaults allegedly committed in September 2021 during the filming of Les Volets Verts – The Green Shutters.
French prosecutors said the actor would face a criminal trial in October after he was detained for questioning by police in Paris for several hours earlier yesterday.
Depardieu – who made his name in hit films such as Green Card and The Last Metro – vehemently denies all the accusations against him.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the actor has been ‘summoned to appear before the criminal court’ after the questioning.
A trial will start in October ‘for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021’ against ‘two victims, on the set of the film The Green Shutters’, the statement said. It did not name the alleged victims.
Earlier, Depardieu was questioned, and later released, over allegations from two women that he assaulted them on film sets, one in 2021, the other in 2014.
The first woman accuses Depardieu of assaulting her when she was a member of the crew on The Green Shutters.
The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set in a private hotel in Paris.
She alleged he groped her ‘waist and stomach, moving up to [her] breasts’ and made obscene comments before his bodyguards removed him.
‘It’s a relief,’ the woman’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, told news agency AFP after the announcement of a trial.
‘There are certainly other victims,’ she said, adding that up to 25 women have spoken out about ‘acts ranging from contempt to sexist violence, including harassment and sexual assault. It’s time for him to be judged.’
Another woman who worked on The Green Shutters set has also accused the actor of sexual violence. A third woman has alleged Depardieu groped her ‘all over’ and made ‘inappropriate’ remarks while she was a 24-year-old assistant on the set of 2015 film Le magician et le Siamois – The Magician and the Siamese – she told regional newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest.
Depardieu will not face charges over those claims because the statute of limitations had expired, her lawyer, also Ms Durrieu-Diebolt, said. ‘If we had a sliding statute of limitations for adults like we do for minors, these women could have had legal recourse.’
Depardieu has also been accused by more than a dozen other women of harassing, groping or sexually assaulting them.
He was handed preliminary charges in 2020 following allegations from actress Charlotte Arnould, 28, who claims she was raped and sexually assaulted by Depardieu.
There is CCTV footage of Depardieu performing a sex act on Ms Arnould at his Paris mansion in August 2018, but he insists it was consensual.
Ms Arnould renounced her legal right to anonymity at the end of 2021, following Depardieu being charged with rape and sexual assault.
In October he broke his silence over claims that he is a serial sex abuser, saying: ‘I am neither a rapist nor a predator.’
‘Already under investigation’