2023-10-01 18:51:11
France
Accused of rape, Gérard Depardieu denounces a “media lynching”
While he was indicted in 2020, the actor tried to dismantle the accusations of actress Charlotte Arnould in a long letter published in “Le Figaro”.
Published October 1, 2023, 8:51 p.m.
Without naming her, Gérard Depardieu attacks Charlotte Arnould, the actress who filed a complaint once morest him for two rapes in 2018.
REUTERS
“Neither rapist nor predator”: indicted since 2020 for suspicion of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould, actor Gérard Depardieu defied the accusations once morest him on Sunday, denouncing a “lynching” orchestrated by the “media court”.
“I can no longer consent to what I hear, what I have read regarding myself for several months. I thought I didn’t care, but no, actually no. All this gets to me. Worse still, turns me off,” writes the 74-year-old actor in an open letter published in the opinion section of the newspaper “Le Figaro.”
This long text, resembling a poem, constitutes the first speech by the monument of French cinema since the publication of new testimonies once morest it, in the spring, by Mediapart. “Never, ever have I abused a woman,” he wrote.
“Neither constraint nor protest”
Without naming her, Gérard Depardieu attacks Charlotte Arnould, the actress who filed a complaint once morest him for two rapes in 2018. According to him, “a woman came to my house the first time, her steps light, rising from her willingly in my room. She says today that she was raped there. “There has never been any coercion, violence or protest between us,” he assures. And to continue: “If she was under the influence, it was under her own influence, she was never under my influence.”
“If, thinking of living intensely in the present, I hurt or shocked anyone, I never thought of doing any harm and I apologize for having behaved like a child who wants to amuse the gallery,” he writes once more, and insists that he is “neither a rapist nor a predator.” “To the media tribunal, to the lynching that has been reserved for me, I have only my word to oppose,” he concludes.
Thirteen other accusers
Gérard Depardieu was indicted on December 16, 2020 for “rape” and “sexual assault” following the complaint of the actress, who had denounced, at the end of August 2018, two rapes at the star’s Parisian home. In the summer of 2020, she obtained that the investigation, first closed by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office in June 2019, be entrusted to an investigating judge.
In April, Mediapart revealed the testimonies of thirteen women accusing Gérard Depardieu of sexual violence. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office indicated, at the time of these revelations, that it had “not received any new complaints to date”. He also specified that the investigation opened in July 2020, following the complaint of this actress, was continuing.
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(AFP)
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