The actor and comedian Ary Abittan obtained on Tuesday a dismissal of the charges launched following the complaint of a woman who accused him of having raped her in October 2021, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday, confirming information from the Figaro. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Me Charlotte Plantin, announced that she would appeal the dismissal.
The actor’s lawyer, Caroline Toby, said she was “delighted for Ary Abittan”. “I hope that he will finally be able to devote himself to his career and that cinema will extend its hand to him once more,” she reacted to Le Parisien. “This dismissal order comes at the end of an investigation carried out by two investigating judges. There were numerous hearings, expert opinions, interrogations. Nothing was left out,” she added.
This decision was expected since the actor, aged 50, had obtained in July 2023 the dismissal of his indictment pronounced in November 2021 and had been placed under the status of assisted witness. The two investigating judges in charge of the investigations had justified their decision by the absence of “serious or consistent evidence in favor of an act of sexual penetration imposed by violence, coercion, threat or surprise”, according to the order consulted at the period by Le Parisien. “The dismissal order is a continuation of this decision,” commented Caroline Toby.
“Weakened” indices
The complainant, who had been seeing the actor for two months at the time of the alleged facts, accuses him of having imposed sodomy on her while they spent the evening at his home, on October 30, 2021. She had filed a complaint the same night. During the procedure, the young woman described the actor popularized by the success of the film “What did we do to the Good Lord?” » as “obsessed” by the practice of sodomy but had clarified that he had, until then, always accepted her refusal. That night, however, she claims to have first said “no not tonight”, then “screamed in pain” during the act.
The judges initially considered that the preliminary investigation resulted in suspicions suggesting that Ary Abittan had ignored the young woman’s consent and had used violence. They relied in particular on medically noted injuries to the victim’s genitals and anal areas, the presence of blood on a bath towel and the testimony of a friend of the complainant reporting her distress following the events. , they recall in the dismissal order.
But the investigations that followed changed the situation. If the judges recognized the “indisputable” post-traumatic stress of the complainant, they decided in the summer of 2023 to abandon the indictment of Ary Abittan following noting other elements “likely to weaken the value proof of the clues initially retained.
A “respectful partner”
Among these elements is the fact that the complainant “refused to give the telephone details of the only partner with whom she had practiced sodomy”. As such, the judges considered that it is “not excluded that the civil party had relations of a different nature with another partner”. The testimonies of Ary Abittan’s ex-girlfriends or sexual partners who spoke of a “respectful partner, attentive and attentive to their pleasure” also worked in the actor’s favor. He has always denied being a “dominator” and rejected the term violence in his sexual antics with his conquests.
Furthermore, the judges write in the order that the plaintiff’s statements on her vision of her relationship with the actor and her account of the events of that evening “have evolved”, “which calls into question the credit” of his first statements. Therefore, “there are no sufficient charges once morest Ary Abittan of having committed the acts of rape on October 30, 2021”, conclude the judges in their dismissal order.
“The public prosecutor requested the dismissal of the case by final indictment on February 19 and the investigating judge issued his order on April 2,” according to the prosecution. In 2023, the comedian returned to the stage with a new show and will continue his tour in 2024.
