“Neither rapist nor predator”: Accused since 2020 on suspicion of rape and sexual assault on the actress Charlotte Arnould, the actor Gérard Depardieu exposed the allegations against him on Sunday and denounced a “lynching” staged by the “Media Court”.
I couldn’t agree more with what I’ve been hearing, what I’ve been reading about myself for several months. I thought I wouldn’t care, but no, actually no. This is all getting on my nerves. Worse, it puts me off, writes the 74-year-old actor in an open letter published in the opinion section of the newspaper Le Figaro.
This flowing text, which resembles a poem, represents the first speech of the monument of French cinema since the publication of new testimonies against it by Mediapart last spring.
“I have never abused a woman,” he writes.
Without naming her, Gérard Depardieu attacks Charlotte Arnould, the actress who filed a complaint against him for two rapes in 2018.
According to him, for the first time a woman came to my house, walked lightly and of her own free will into my room. She now says she was raped there. There were never any pressures, violence or protests between us, he assures us.
If she was under the influence, it was under her own influence, she was never under my influence.
When I think of living the present intensely, I have hurt or shocked someone, I have never thought of harming them, and I apologize for behaving like a child who wants to entertain the gallery. , he writes again, before insisting that he is neither a rapist nor a predator.
Thirteen women denounced
“In front of the media court, I can only oppose the lynching that is reserved for me with my word,” he concludes.
Gérard Depardieu was charged with rape and sexual assault on December 16, 2020, following a complaint by the actress who reported two rapes at the star’s Paris home in late August 2018. In the summer of 2020, she achieved that the investigations, which were initially discontinued by the Paris public prosecutor’s office in June 2019, were transferred to an investigating judge.
In April, Mediapart published the statements of 13 women who accused Gérard Depardieu of sexual violence. At the time of these revelations, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said it had not received any new complaints.
The prosecutor’s office also stated that the investigation launched in July 2020 following this actress’ complaint is still ongoing.