Judith Godrèche has filed a complaint against directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon for rape of minors, accusations that the two filmmakers deny. We take stock of the matter.
Judith Godreche caused a real earthquake within French cinema by breaking a decades-old silence. The 51-year-old actress filed a complaint on February 6, 2024 against two recognized directors of the French cinema: Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon. She accuses the first of “violent rape of a minor under 15 years old” and the second of “rape of a minor under 15 years old by a person in authority”.
The two septuagenarian directors completely deny these accusations, with Jacques Doillon even wishing to file a complaint for “defamation” against the actress. Below, we take stock of the current legal case and the accusations made by Judith Godrèche.
Publicly, Judith Godrèche and Benoît Jacquot had a six-year “relationship” from 1986 to 1992. The actress was then 14 years old when she met the 39-year-old filmmaker during a casting for the film. Beggars. On the set, they get closer to the point of forming, in everyone’s eyes at least, an official “couple”. But the broadcast of a documentary on the director, where he assumes the “transgression” of his past relationship with the one who was then a teenager, was a trigger for the actress.
In these images, Benoît Jacquot says in particular “Yes, it was a transgression. If only in terms of the law (…) we do not have the right in principle, I believe. A girl like her who was in fact 15 years old, and I was 40, I had no right.” On January 8, 2024, Judith Godrèche denounced the director by name on her Instagram account for the first time: “The little girl in me can no longer keep silent about this name. His name is Benoît Jacquot. He still manipulates those who could associate their names with the mine. Testify. He threatens to take me to court for defamation.”
Since then, Judith Godrèche has denounced a “perversion” and a “control” exercised by the director, going so far as to file a complaint on February 6, 2024 for “violent rape of a minor under 15 years old”. In her testimony to the Minor Protection Brigade of the Paris judicial police, transcribed in Le Monde, the actress and director of Icon of French cinema says that she “would have wanted Benoît to agree to be my friend, to not have me, I didn’t want his body”. “He disgusted me,” she adds. She also denounces a sometimes brutal sexual relationship with the filmmaker: “he tells me to take off my sweater, that we are going to play a sexual game. I have to stand on the stairs, with my back to him and close my eyes. He takes his belt, starts to whip me. I let him do one blow, two blows, but I can’t.” Now aged 77, Benoît Jacquot denies the accusations against him. In the columns of Le Monde, he evokes a long “loving” relationship, “devoid, according to him, of brutality and predation”.
On February 6, 2024, Judith Godrèche also filed a complaint against Jacques Doillon for “rape of a 15-year-old minor by a person in authority”. At the microphone of France Inter two days later, the actress recounts two attacks of which she says she was the victim at the hands of the ex-husband of Jane Birkin and father of Lou Doillon (in particular).
The first attack denounced by Judith Godrèche allegedly took place “in Jane Birkin’s house”. She will not give the details at the France Inter microphone. The second attack allegedly took place on the set of the film The 15 year old girl, directed by and with the same Jacques Doillon. “All of a sudden, he decides that there is a love scene, a sex scene between him and me,” she explains on France Inter. “I take off my sweater, I’m shirtless, he gropes me, makes out with me” in 45 takes. She assures that the facts would have taken place in front of Jane Birkin, then still in a relationship with the director, for whom the “situation was extremely painful”.
Jacques Doillon has always denied the accusations against him and plans to file a complaint against the 51-year-old actress for defamation. Her lawyer also denounced Judith Godrèche’s “vile” comments in a press release sent to AFP.
Judith Godrèche filed a complaint against Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon on February 6, 2024. The next day, an investigation was opened by the Paris public prosecutor’s office on February 7, 2024. This concerns more specifically “the offenses of rape of a minor under 15 years by person in authority, rape, violence by partner, and sexual assault on a minor over 15 years of age by person in authority, all of the facts denounced having taken place between 1986 and 1992”. The investigations were entrusted to the Minor Protection Brigade.
If there is probably a statute of limitations, the acts of “violent rape of a minor under 15 years of age” are punishable by 20 years in prison. For his part, Jacques Doillon intends to file a complaint for defamation against Judith Godrèche.
Following Judith Godrèche’s complaints, other actresses spoke out against the two directors she denounces. Isild Le Besco denounces a controlling relationship exercised by Benoît Jacquot when she was 16 years old and having suffered “psychological or physical violence”. She also accuses Jacques Doillon of having refused her a role after she refused his advances. Anna Mouglalis filed a complaint against Jacques Doillon and accuses him of having forcibly kissed her in a stairwell, on the sidelines of the filming of the film A child of you in 2011.