Indicted for rape, actor Gérard Depardieu assures, in an open letter this Sunday, that he is not “a predator”. “It will be up to the courts to decide,” replies the plaintiff’s lawyer.
I am “shocked and scandalized because Monsieur Depardieu says he is exposing his truth, but it is certainly not Charlotte’s truth [Arnould] and it will certainly not be the one that will be retained by justice”reacted Sunday October 1 on franceinfo master Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, lawyer for the plaintiff after the open letter published by the actor on the Figaro website.
>> “I understood that I was in his sights”: a 16th woman accuses Gérard Depardieu of sexist and sexual violence
Actor Gérard Depardieu was indicted on December 16, 2020 for rape and sexual assault, franceinfo learned from a judicial source. No security measures had been taken towards him. A young actress, Charlotte Arnould, filed a complaint against the actor in August 2018, a complaint dismissed in June 2019. In August 2020, we learned that an investigating judge had been appointed.
Returning to this affair in the text published on the Figaro website, Gérard Depardieu explains that“a woman came to my house the first time, walking lightly, going into my room of her own free will. She says today that she was raped there. She came back a second time. There was never between we neither constraint, nor violence, nor protest”. This version of the facts is contested by Maître Durrieu-Diebolt.
The victim was 22 years old at the time of the incident.
Charlotte’s truth, “that is to say that she came at his invitation because he asked her how she was because they knew each other”she insists. “We have the impression when reading it that it is about an anonymous woman” while “It’s a young girl he knew and who was 22 years old at the time of the events and he was 70”.
It was “the daughter of a friend of Monsieur Depardieu whom he carried on his knees when she was a baby, so there was a bond of trust and paternal respect towards her. It was he who invited her to know how she was going and in these circumstances, one does not expect after ten minutes to undergo sexual acts”details Charlotte Arnould’s lawyer.
>> Sexual violence: what we know about the new accusations against Gérard Depardieu
These are “sexual acts that were committed by surprise, we have videos”. “He recognizes sexual acts”. The complaint is “linked to sexual acts committed with coercion and surprise”. For Master Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, “Mr. Depardieu is not the protector of women that he claims to be when he is accused by 15 women of sexual violence and he says that he is neither a rapist nor a predator, that will be up to the justice system decide”.