A preliminary investigation into rape and sexual assault was launched on July 5 to consider three separate complaints from women involving director Nicolas Bedos, Paris prosecutors said on Tuesday, confirming information from Mediapart.
• Also read: Director Nicolas Bedos was charged with sexual assault in early 2024
Mr Bedos’ lawyer, Me Julia Minkowski, was contacted and declined to respond.
The investigation has been entrusted to the first district of the Paris criminal police, said a source familiar with the file and the prosecutor’s office.
Two of the women who claim to have sent a report to the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office at the end of June told Mediapart of the facts of a sexual nature which they accuse Nicolas Bedos of.
One of them, a 50-year-old actress and screenwriter who calls herself Chloé, accuses the 44-year-old director of raping her at the Bedos’ house in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) one night in 1999.
The 26-year-old waitress had agreed to follow Nicolas Bedos with friends and then her parents, with whom a “form of friendly relationship” had been formed.
A second woman, first name Marion, described to online media a sexual assault committed by Nicolas Bedos at a holiday home in August 2017 when she was a teenager.
It was the announcement of the actor’s police custody and the announcement of his trial that prompted the two women, who know each other, to testify in court, Mediapart specifies.
The director was taken into custody on June 21 after a woman complained of touching his privates over his trousers in a Paris club on the night of June 1-2.
At the end of his hearing, he was summoned to appear before the Paris Criminal Court in February 2024 for sexual assault while clearly intoxicated, an offense for which he faces a five-year prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros.
“He does not wish to question the complainant’s word, which describes an inappropriate gesture of a few seconds above her jeans,” her attorney, Me Julia Minkowski, explained at the time. “But such a gesture, which he does not remember, which would have taken place on the dance floor of a nightclub, could only have been accidental under the effect of intoxication,” she adds.
Nicolas Bedos has played multiple roles in the world of cinema: playwright, columnist, screenwriter and even actor.
The son of the humorist Guy Bedos, he has made a name for himself since his theatrical debut in 2004 at the age of almost 25 with several plays, including “Sortie de scène”, illustrating himself in many areas.