French star actor Depardieu arrested on charges of sexual abuse

NOS News•today, 5:38 PM

French actor Gérard Depardieu (75) has been arrested in Paris. The immediate reason for the arrest were the statements of two women. They accuse Depardieu of sexual assault during filming.

One of the women, a 24-year-old production assistant at the time, says she was assaulted on the set of Le magicien et les siamois. She previously spoke in interviews about inappropriate comments that Depardieu had made at the time.

The other woman worked as a set designer during the filming of 2021 Les volets verts. Depardieu allegedly assaulted her there and said he would stick his “big parasol” in her. She says he then squeezed her so tightly between his legs that a colleague had to intervene.

These are not the only complaints against Depardieu: in total, at least sixteen women accuse him of inappropriate behavior. He is accused of making rude comments, assault and also rape.

In 2018, a young actress accused him of rape in his home in Paris. That case came to a dead end due to a lack of evidence, but the judiciary has been re-investigating the allegations since 2020. At the end of last year, Depardieu was again discredited by a documentary by the public broadcaster France 2. It showed images from 2018 in which the actor made comments about women and their genitals.

The actor has always strongly denied the allegations. This is what he wrote last year in a letter to Le Figaro that he has never abused a woman. Last December, a group of sixty prominent figures from the French cultural sector stood up for Depardieu in a letter to the same newspaper. They called the allegations against the star actor a “lynching” and spoke of “an outpouring of hatred, without nuance”.