The French film star Gérard Depardieu was convicted by a Paris courtroom on Tuesday on prices of sexually assaulting two ladies engaged on the set of a movie during which he was starring in 2021. He acquired a suspended sentence of 18 months, and his identify will probably be added to the nationwide intercourse offender registry.
The choose additionally dominated that Mr. Depardieu, now 76, pay damages of 15,000 euros, about $17,000, to one of many two victims and €14,040, together with her medical charges, to the opposite.
Mr. Depardieu was not in courtroom for the ruling. His lawyer, Jérémie Assous, stated he would attraction.
The decision was welcomed by the victims’ legal professionals as a landmark win for French ladies within the publish #MeToo world.
“For me, it’s a victory, actually,” stated one of many two victims, who has agreed to be recognized solely by her first identify, Amélie. “We’re transferring ahead.”
Her lawyer, Carine Durrieu Diebolt, stated she hoped the ruling would imply the “finish of impunity for artists within the movie business.”
“I’ve heard some actors not too long ago nonetheless supporting Depardieu. Now with this verdict, nobody can say Gérard Depardieu shouldn’t be a sexual predator, and that’s essential,” she stated.
The 2 victims each labored on “Les Volets Verts,” a 2021 French movie starring Mr. Depardieu — Amélie, as a set decorator, and the opposite plaintiff, who has not agreed to be recognized publicly, as an assistant director.
The courtroom heard that Mr. Depardieu grabbed Amélie by the waist and pulled her towards him someday on set whereas he was sitting down. Then he locked her between his legs and ran his arms over her buttocks, genitals and breasts whereas muttering obscenities, she testified.
The assistant director, now 34, testified that the actor had touched her breasts and buttocks on three events on the set in Paris.
The choose referred to as their model of occasions coherent, constant and supported by different proof. Mr. Depardieu, 76, denied the sexual assaults in each instances.
The actor stated he was not the “vulgar, impolite, trashy one that makes enjoyable of individuals” that he had been portrayed as within the media. “I respect folks. I like to assist folks,” he informed the courtroom in March.
However he additionally stated he was from a special era and that his flamboyant, bombastic and unapologetic persona was unwell suited to the present period.
From the start, it was clear the trial was about greater than two sexual assaults by one in every of France’s best-known movie stars. What occurred within the courtroom, as a substitute, was a part of a protracted overdue reckoning in regards to the nation’s obsession with seduction, the uncritical adulation of its artists and the stalling in France of the #MeToo motion.
Mr. Depardieu is taken into account among the many biggest actors of his era, starring in additional than 230 movies, together with “Inexperienced Card” and “Cyrano de Bergerac.”
He shot to fame after starring within the 1974 movie “Les Valseuses,” during which he performed a small-town thug who romps round France, stealing automobiles, and sexually harassing and assaulting ladies. He stated the movie mirrored his hardscrabble upbringing in central France as a member of a gang that stole automobiles and smuggled whiskey and cigarettes.
In 1978 and 1991, Mr. Depardieu informed two totally different American journalists that he had taken half in his first gang rape at age 9, and “there had been many after that.” Later, he stated it had been a translation error and a part of an American smear marketing campaign towards him. He stated he had by no means raped anybody however had been speaking about his sexual experiences.
In France, he was well-known for his larger-than-life persona, a person who drove his automobile recklessly and arrived on movie units drunk. Later, he hobnobbed with dictators like Fidel Castro and Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, and deserted France for Belgium and then Russia to keep away from a tax on the tremendous wealthy.
He has been on the middle of the controversy in France over the #MeToo motion since its arrival within the nation in 2017, with accusations of sexual abuse piling up towards him. He has denied the accusations and been publicly defended by outstanding and highly effective folks within the nation.
Greater than 20 ladies have accused him of sexual abuse, principally by chatting with French information retailers, notably the investigation web site Mediapart. Six of these ladies filed complaints with the police — two of which have been dropped as a result of they have been previous the statute of limitations.
Amongst those that have rushed to Mr. Depardieu’s protection through the years is President Emmanuel Macron of France, who condemned what he referred to as a “manhunt” towards the actor, whom he stated, “makes France proud.”
This was the primary case towards Mr. Depardieu to go to trial.
Three different ladies in movie and tv testified as witnesses throughout the proceedings, describing scenes of sexual abuse that they had suffered whereas working with Mr. Depardieu.
Considered one of them, Lucile Leider, stated the actor assaulted her a number of occasions when she labored as a fancy dress assistant in 2014. She recounted to the courtroom how he pulled her behind a curtain, pressed himself towards her and stroked her breasts and genitals whereas whispering obscenities.
“I remembered saying no with a low voice, however Gérard Depardieu doesn’t know that phrase,” she informed the courtroom. “This man is harmful,” she stated. “Everybody round him is aware of it they usually don’t do something.”
Sitting on a cube-like stool throughout the trial, Mr. Depardieu introduced a research in confusion and distraction. He mumbled, muddling by means of semi-responses, and mashed disjointed concepts into run-on sentences. Requested about ladies, he introduced up the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, hospitals he beloved and Victor Hugo.
At one level, he admitted he didn’t know what a sexual assault was, saying it should be “extra severe” than simply placing a hand on a girl’s buttocks.
He “most likely” introduced it was too sizzling to get an erection on set, as Amélie had described, he stated, “however the obscenity was not addressed to her.”
He informed the courtroom he got here from a special era — one which discovered his obscene jokes humorous — and that he would use vulgar language on set to annoy folks and provoke a response.
That period, and his time, he stated, was completed.
“I come from the previous world, in fact, and am undecided if this new world pursuits me,” he stated.
He stated the #MeToo motion was more likely to “change into a terror” and blamed it for depriving him of labor for 3 years, although he has been not too long ago seen filming in Portugal.
Mr. Depardieu’s lawyer, Mr. Assous, grew to become nearly as a lot a topic of public debate as his shopper throughout the trial. Mr. Assous’s courtroom techniques and protection technique have been denounced by greater than 180 French legal professionals in an opinion piece within the newspaper Le Monde as rife with “sexism and misogyny.”
At a listening to earlier than the trial, Mr. Assous stated that the 2 victims have been pushed by greed. He additionally loudly interrupted the courtroom dozens of occasions, shouting that the plaintiffs’ two feminine legal professionals have been “abject,” “silly” and “hysterical,” and denouncing the trial as “Stalinist.”
He referred to as each of the plaintiffs liars, saying one had by no means been a “actual sufferer.” “We don’t imagine you,” he stated as he ended one cross-examination.
The courtroom dominated that the ladies had suffered “secondary victimization” from Mr. Assous’s conduct throughout the trial, noting that the appropriate to protection didn’t legitimize “outrageous phrases and humiliation.” Included within the damages the courtroom awarded them was €1,000 for secondary victimization.
