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Gérard Depardieu has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in 2021 and given an 18 month suspended prison sentence.
Depardieu, France’s biggest film star, who has made more than 200 films and TV series, is the highest-profile figure in the French film industry to be convicted of sexual assault since the #MeToo movement.
The 76-year-old, who was not in court for the verdict, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in September 2021.
The court heard that Depardieu trapped the set decorator, identified only as Amélie, between his legs on the film set and grabbed her buttocks, pubis and chest. She said he trapped her with force, used obscene language and had to be pulled off her.
Depardieu targeted Amélie on set when she was making phone calls to track down parasols for the film. He allegedly said: “Come and touch my big parasol. I’ll stick it in your pussy.”
Amélie told the court that he then grabbed her hips, pulled her towards him and trapped her between his thighs with great force, and grabbed her body, including her pubis, waist and chest.
“That’s where I understood the strength he had, he held me very, very hard,” she said. “I remember his eyes, I saw this big face, red eyes, very angry, very agitated. And he was saying: ‘Come touch my big parasol,’ with a crazy look. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
She said: “That fear that I felt – what stands out for me is not his sexual desire but his savagery. It was the fact that he knew I was afraid – I saw his eyes light up with a kind of pleasure in making someone afraid. I remember that savagery. He really terrified me, and that amused him.”
Depardieu was also convicted of sexually assaulting an assistant director on the same film, touching her breasts or buttocks on three separate occasions. The woman, who was not named in the media, was tasked with accompanying Depardieu from his dressing room on to the set during the filming. She said the assaults left her “petrified”.
The assistant director told the court that a first sexual assault happened during a night shoot in Paris, when she found herself alone with Depardieu at the end of a short road where his dressing room was located as they walked towards an outdoor set.
She said the second assault happened at a later date on a set inside a Paris apartment, where Depardieu blocked her against a door and put his two hands on her breasts. She told the court: “I said no. I was scared.”
She said that on a third occasion Depardieu put his hand on her buttocks and she again said: “No.”
The assistant director told the court that Depardieu “talked about sex all day on set, constantly talking of ‘pussy’ to everyone”.
Depardieu denied sexual assault. He told the trial that the media had used allegations against him to damage his reputation. He attacked the #MeToo movement as well as women who had held protest placards outside a concert tour he was on at the time of the allegations. “This movement is going to become a terror,” he said.
Depardieu’s trial was seen as a turning point for the French cinema industry, which has been accused of being slow – even resistant – to taking women’s claims of abuse seriously.
A damning parliamentary report by French politicians concluded last month that sexual violence and sexual harassment remained “endemic” in France’s entertainment industry and that women and children were still being routinely preyed on.
More details soon …
