Thirteen women accuse French actor Gérard Depardieu of sexual violence, already indicted on suspicion of rape and sexual assault on actress Charlotte Arnould, according to an article from the news site Mediapart.
Asked by AFP, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that it had “not received any new complaints to date”, and specified that the investigation opened in July 2020 following Charlotte Arnould’s complaint, continued.
The 74-year-old actor “formally denies all the charges that may fall under criminal law”, told Mediapart the Temime law firm, responsible for defending him. Contacted by AFP, the firm declined to comment further.
In a long article published on Tuesday, the investigative site reports the testimony of 13 women who claim “to have suffered inappropriate sexual gestures or remarks from the famous actor, of different severity, on the set of eleven films or series released between 2004 and 2022. or in external places”, as well as the account of certain witnesses of the scenes.
These women “claim to have suffered a hand in their panties, on their crotch, on their buttocks or on their chest; obscene sexual remarks; sometimes insistent grunts, ”writes Mediapart.
“Followed, often, by laughter on set. And this same sentence, when some complained: “Oh it’s okay, it’s Gérard!” “, continues the article.
The actor of Cyrano de Bergerac has been charged with “rape” and “sexual assault” since December 2020 after accusations from actress Charlotte Arnould, who says she was raped twice in August 2018 by the star at the latter’s Paris home, when she was 22 years old.
None of the women mentioned in Mediapart did not file a complaint, but three of them gave their testimony to justice, according to the site. A woman, who was an extra in 2014 on the film big house (2015), directed by Jean-Emmanuel Godart, notably sent his testimony in March “to help Charlotte Arnould”.
“Without warning, Gérard Depardieu put his hand under my dress, I felt his fingers trying to sneak in to reach my panties,” she told Mediapart, saying he “repelled his hand”. “But he continued, he became aggressive, he tried to remove my panties and finger me: I understood that he was not playing his character. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have succeeded,” she added.