The president of the National Cinema Center, Dominique Boutonnat, sentenced to three years in prison, including one year, for sexual assault on his godson

He immediately announced that he was leaving the presidency of the institution. Since his indictment, Dominique Boutonnat had been the subject of several calls for his resignation.

The president of the National Cinema Center (CNC), Dominique Boutonnat, was sentenced to three years in prison, one of which was firm, by the Nanterre criminal court (Hauts-de-Seine), Friday June 28. He was on trial for sexual assault on his godson, then aged 21. The year in prison will be served under electronic surveillance. Dominique Boutonnat is also banned from contacting the victim for three years. He also faces a five-year ineligibility and registration in the register of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses.

Dominique Boutonnat immediately announced that he was leaving the presidency of the institution. Since his indictment, he had been the subject of several calls for his resignation.

During the hearing on June 14, the prosecution requested a three-year suspended prison sentence against this 54-year-old man. “We came very close to something that would have been criminal“, the prosecutor had estimated. The court went beyond the requisitions in its sentencing. He “considered that Malaury’s version [prénom d’emprunt de la victime] seemed much more credible” than that given by Dominique Boutonnat, and that the explanations of the president of the CNC “did not necessarily have rationality”detailed the president, during the hearing.

Dominique Boutonnat, who some have held up as a symbol of the impunity that some big names in the seventh art have long enjoyed, is accused by his godson, who was 21 at the time of the events, of having forcibly kissed him and sexually assaulted him during a stay in Greece in August 2020. In court, the young man described Dominique Boutonnat, with whom he is not related, as “more than a godfather”coming three to four times a week to his parents’ home.

According to him, during a stay in his godfather’s country house in Greece, the latter tried to masturbate him after they had bathed naked in a swimming pool. The young man said he then masturbated him so he would stop touching him. At the helm, the president of the CNC denied any sexual assault.