(Paris) The complaint of actress Hélène Darras, who accused actor Gérard Depardieu of having sexually assaulted her during filming in 2007, was closed at the end of December for prescription, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Monday.
“The classification for prescription is not a surprise to me. If I filed a complaint, it’s because I could no longer remain silent,” responded Hélène Darras to AFP.
“From now on, if my testimony allows justice to move forward with complaints that have not expired, or if it can free the speech of other victims, or even relaunch the debate on limitation, all this will not have been in vain,” she added.
Lawyers for the French cinema giant did not respond to requests from AFP.
The complaint dates from September 10. The actress, who had already testified before the courts and in Mediapart, thus “wanted to respond to the defense which minimizes our denunciations by saying that these are “only” testimonies”, she explained to AFP at the beginning of December.
She was referring to the multiple accusations published in the press against Gérard Depardieu, who contests.
“It took me a year to move from testimony to complaint,” she also confided. “Walking through the door of the police station, telling a police officer that your private parts were touched, it’s not easy, it takes time to think about it,” she added.
The investigative magazine Further investigation broadcast on France 2 had revealed M’s complaintme Darras, who gave his story there: during filming, Gérard Depardieu “passes his hand on my hips, on my buttocks” then “says to me bluntly: “Do you want to come into my dressing room?” “.
The actress tells him “no”, but “it doesn’t change anything”, she says: “Between takes, he will continue to grope me”.
In a separate case, Gérard Depardieu was indicted in Paris on December 16, 2020 for rape and sexual assault after a complaint from another actress, Charlotte Arnould, who denounced two rapes at the actor’s Parisian home at the end of August 2018. .
M’s lawyerme Arnould, Me Carine Durrieu-Diebolt recently wrote to the Paris prosecutor’s office to ask them to analyze the report by Further investigationaccording to the public prosecutor confirming BFM TV.
The lawyer believes that the comments made by Mr. Depardieu in front of the camera are likely to be criminal, which the prosecution is analyzing.
In the viewfinder: a new video shot in 2018 during a trip with writer Yann Moix to North Korea, where we hear Gérard Depardieu making gestures and throat noises mimicking the sexual act and making comments who shocked.
In a stud farm, the actor states in particular that “women love to ride horses, (because) their clits rub on the saddle […], they enjoy enormously.” And continues: “They’re big sluts.”