“Suddenly, something in my brain woke me from torpor. I told myself that something abnormal was happening.” Three women accuse psychoanalyst and director Gérard Miller, 75, of rape and sexual assault, in a magazine investigation She, published Wednesday January 31. According to these testimonies, the facts denounced occurred in particular during hypnosis sessions several years ago. Asked by the weekly, the person concerned contests these accusations. Here is what we know about this affair.
1 What are the accusations against Gérard Miller?
The first story reported by the magazine is that of the journalist and director Muriel Cousin, who accuses Gérard Miller of having sexually assaulted her in 1990, when she was 23 years old and they both worked for the monthly World. The famous psychoanalyst, aged 42 at the time, was looking for “a guinea pig for an article on hypnosis”and she was carried “voluntary”relates She. But while the young woman finds herself lying down, her eyes closed, “in the premises of the Freudian Field Institute, in Paris”she claims to feel that something is happening “something abnormal”. “He touched my breasts under my sweater. I also felt his hand pass over my penis, over the pants”, remembers the one who testifies for the first time. Muriel Cousin “find the courage to get up and run away”. A former colleague confirms She THE “faintness” of the journalist on her return to the editorial office.
Another testimony, that of Camille, the assumed first name given by She, denounced a rape in 2004. Then aged 19 and Gérard Miller 55, she attended the program “On a tout être”, in which the psychoanalyst and columnist took part. At the end of the recording, invited with a friend to follow him home to “have a drink”she is offered, according to her, to participate in “a game” that he used to do “with his patients”. The two young women lie down on the ground. “It rose very gradually to my chest. I must have been in a daze, because I didn’t react. Next to me, my friend got up to leave”, she reports. Camille accuses Gérard Miller of having then raped her in her bedroom: “I’m stunned, it’s like a trap closing on me. I can no longer move, I’m a dead body trembling”she relates.
A third woman, who worked as a babysitter for the psychoanalyst, reported a sexual assault in 1993, when she was 19 years old and Gérard Miller was driving her home. “When he was dropping me off, he suddenly touched my breasts and tried to kiss me. He was older than my mother, I was looking after his children, it wasn’t possible!”, she is indignant in the columns of the magazine. Other women, actresses, including Anna Mouglalis, are remembered for She inappropriate proposals at the time of filming Terminalein 1998, for which Gérard Miller was screenwriter.
2 What does Gérard Miller answer?
The psychoanalyst had anticipated this publication, announcing on Friday on the social network She of an investigation “seriously jeopardizing”. “As soon as I become aware of the article, I will react as soon as possible here”added the professor emeritus at Paris 8 University. Requested by She as part of the article, Gérard Miller responded “never sexually abused anyone under any circumstances”.
“There has never been anything that could be described as sexual assault, or worse, rape”he reaffirmed Wednesday evening, in a statement published on his X account. The psychoanalyst recognizes, however, “that an unequal relationship objectively existed in relationships (…) with younger women”. “Psychoanalyst, academic, author, TV and radio columnist, I was in fact a ‘man of power’, and there was from then on an ‘objective’ asymmetry, which we can say today was purely and simply prohibitive”, he adds.
The name of the media psychoanalyst had resurfaced recently after the rebroadcast on social networks of his interview with director Benoît Jacquot in 2011, as part of a documentary, The Ruses of Desire. In front of a conciliatory Gérard Miller, the filmmaker spoke of his relationships with young actresses, including Judith Godrèche, who was 14 at the time and he was 40. A relationship “of influence”according to the latter, depicted in her series French icon of cinema. Questioned about this controversial interview, at the beginning of January, in the show “C ce soir” on France 5, Gérard Miller, now involved with La France insoumise, justified himself as follows: “Today, I could no longer imagine the same film, because we are no longer in this collective blindness. We have to measure what has changed, otherwise we forget what was revolutionary in MeToo.”
3 Can the courts investigate these accusations?
None of the women interviewed by She has not taken legal action against Gérard Miller. Muriel Cousin explains to the magazine that she did not have the idea of filing a complaint after the events she denounces: “At the time, that wasn’t happening.” Now, the question of prescription arises. In France, the time limit beyond which it is no longer possible to prosecute a person suspected of rape increased in 2017 from 10 to 20 years. But the law is not retroactive. The rape of which Camille says she was a victim in 2004 was therefore prescribed in 2014. The statute of limitations for a sexual assault on an adult is six years.
However, can the Paris public prosecutor’s office, which has geographical jurisdiction, take matters into its own hands? When asked, he replied that“in the event of revelation of facts of a sexual nature by the press”, he “has a policy of only taking the initiative for an investigation if it appears that the victim(s) were minors and therefore unable to initiate proceedings on their own”.
In fact, until now, justice has taken its own action in cases involving potential minor victims, as recommended by the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti in 2021. That same year, after the broadcast of an issue of “Special Envoy” relaying accusations of rape and sexual assault against Nicolas Hulot, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced the next day the opening of a preliminary investigation, one of the victims declared being a minor at the time facts. It was dismissed in 2022.
Regarding adults, “it is left to adult victims to make the choice, by being able to consult a lawyer or a victim support association, to entrust their story to the prosecution or to an investigation service”specifies the Paris prosecutor’s office, adding that “those who wish can send a letter to the public prosecutor’s office on their own initiative or through a lawyer, or contact an investigation service”. According to lawyer Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, who specializes in sexual violence against women, “the prosecutor should carry out an investigation, to find out if there are more recent facts and other victims involved”.