French screen star Depardieu to go on trial for sexual assault in October

French screen legend Gerard Depardieu will go on trial for sexual assault in October, the Paris prosecutor said on Monday after police questioned the actor over claims made by two women, the latest in a litany of such charges.

French actor Gerard Depardieu faces a rape charge as well as claims of assault from more than a dozen women – all of which he has denied. AFP/File

French police on Monday detained actor Gerard Depardieu for questioning after two women accused him of sexual assault, police sources have revealed.

The 75-year-old actor, who has starred in more than 200 films and television series, was charged with rape in 2020 and was forced to put his career on hold last autumn as allegations of sexual harassment and assault mounted against him. He denies the accusations.

After police questioned Depardieu on Monday, the Paris prosecutor said Depardieu would face charges over the assaults allegedly committed in September 2021 during the filming of The Green Shutters movie.  

"Gerard Depardieu was given a summons to appear before the criminal court. He will be tried in October 2024 for sexual assaults likely to have been committed in September 2021 to the detriment of two victims, on the set of the film 'The Green Shutters'," said a statement.

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Earlier, Depardieu was questioned, and later released, over allegations from two women that he assaulted them on film sets, one in 2021 and the other in 2014.

The actor's lawyers, Christian Saint-Palais and Beatrice Geissmann Achille, have not commented.

The first woman accuses Depardieu of having assaulted her when she was a member of the crew on the 2022 feature film The Green Shutters.

The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told the investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set in a private hotel in Paris.

She alleged he groped her waist and stomach, moved up to her breasts and made obscene comments before his bodyguards removed him.

'Certainly other victims'

"It's a relief," the woman's lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, told AFP after the announcement of a trial.

"There are certainly other victims," she said, adding that up to 25 women have spoken out about "acts ranging from contempt to sexist violence, including harassment and sexual assault. It's time for him to be judged."

Anouk Grinberg, who starred with Depardieu on The Green Shutters, has described how she and others on set were treated to his salacious nonsense from morning to night.

"When film producers hire Depardieu on a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor," she told the French news agency AFP.

Grinberg said producers of The Green Shutters had supposedly appointed someone to deal with harassment issues but that she did nothing.

A third woman has alleged Depardieu groped her all over and made inappropriate remarks while she was an assistant on the set of 2015 film Le magician et le Siamois, she told regional newspaper Le Courrier de l'Ouest.

Depardieu will not face charges over those claims because the statute of limitations had expired, her lawyer Durrieu-Diebolt said.

"If we had a sliding statute of limitations for adults like we do for minors, these women could have had legal recourse," Durrieu-Diebolt said.

Stripped of top honour

Depardieu already faces a rape charge, as well as claims of assault from more than a dozen women – all of which he has denied.

"Never ever have I abused a woman," Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.

Police in 2020 charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault after actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her in 2018 when she was 22 and anorexic.

Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December she had filed a criminal complaint in her home country against Depardieu, alleging he raped her in 1995 in Paris.

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Despite the events having passed the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint in the hope that it would help other people to do the same.

Debate over whether to show his films intensified at the end of 2023 after a television report showed the actor repeatedly making obscene comments in the presence of a female interpreter during a 2018 trip to North Korea.

His wax sculpture was hurriedly removed from the Musée Grévin waxwork museum in Paris and Canada's Quebec region stripped him of its top honour.

(with AFP)