The president of the National Center for Cinema was sentenced to three years in prison, one of which was suspended, for sexual assault on his goddaughter. He announced that he was leaving his post.
Dominique Boutonnat, president of the National Center for Cinema, was sentenced to three years in prison (one of which was firm) for sexual assault on his godson (with whom he has no family ties) by the Nanterre Criminal Court on Friday, June 28. The judicial institution considered that the acts of which he was accused went “particularly far in the context of a sexual assault.”
Dominique Boutonnat, who will have to serve his one-year prison sentence at home with an electronic bracelet, has announced that he is leaving his position as president of the CNC, AFP reports. In this message sent to the agents, he reaffirms his “innocence” and announces that he has appealed the judgment. However, he has decided to “cease the exercise of his functions as of today”. The interim presidency of the CNC has been entrusted to Olivier Henrard, deputy general director.
Dominique Boutonnat’s godson, with whom he has no family ties, accuses him of assaulting him in 2019, when he was 21 years old. In his complaint seen by AFP, he says that his godfather tried to masturbate him after they had swum naked in a pool before adding that he then tried to force him to perform oral sex. Dominique Boutonnat has always denied the facts and has only acknowledged “consensual kisses” and “gestures of affection that he stopped when he felt from his godson that this gesture could have degenerated into something else.”
A renewed mandate despite the accusations
Despite the accusations and his indictment for sexual assault in 2021, his mandate was renewed in 2022. Last February, Judith Godrèche had publicly expressed her indignation in front of the Senate and had requested her suspension: “Dominique Boutonnat is the president of the CNC, an institution where producers sometimes go laughing and say to themselves: ‘That’s funny, I’m going to go and do training against sexual violence in an institution whose president is himself accused of sexual violence’. What’s this joke?”
The institution, for its part, assured the AFP that “the alleged facts, which fall within the private sphere, have no connection” with the exercise of its functions within the framework of the CNC. Remember that this institution not only grants subsidies to French productions, but also mobilizes in the fight against sexist and sexual violence within the environment.