French directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon are being questioned under police custody in connection with complaints filed by Judith Godrèche. An update on the case.
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10:33 – Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon in police custody
French directors Jacques Doillon and Benoît Jacquot, accused of sexual violence against minors by Judith Godrèche since last February, have been summoned by the Paris Minor Protection Brigade with a view to being placed in police custody, AFP tells us. The two filmmakers dispute the accusations but arrived at 9:30 a.m. accompanied by their lawyers.
Directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon have been summoned by the Brigade for the Protection of Minors to be questioned under the custody regime this Monday morning, AFP has learned. This follows the two complaints of sexual violence filed by Judith Godrèche last February.
The French actress 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 with authority” and the second of “rape of a minor under 15 years old by a person having authority”. The two septuagenarian directors have always denied these accusations.
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 became closer to the point of forming, in everyone’s eyes at least, an official “couple”. But the broadcast of a documentary about the director, in which 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 the eyes of the law (…) we don’t have the right in principle, I think. A girl like her who was indeed 15 years old, and I was 40, I didn’t have the right.” On January 8, 2024, Judith Godrèche named the director on her Instagram account for the first time: “The little girl in me can no longer keep quiet about this name. His name is Benoît Jacquot. He still manipulates those who could associate their names with 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, to the point of filing a complaint on February 6, 2024 for “rape with violence on a minor under 15 years old”. In her testimony to the Brigade for the Protection of Minors of the Paris Judicial Police, transcribed in Le Monde, the actress and director of Icon of French cinema says that she “would have liked Benoît to agree to be my friend, not to 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’re going to play a sex 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.” Today aged 77, Benoît Jacquot denies the accusations against him. In the columns of Le Monde, he speaks of 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 assault denounced by Judith Godrèche allegedly took place “in Jane Birkin’s house”. She would not give details to France Inter. The second assault allegedly took place on the set of the film The 15 year old girldirected by and starring 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 topless, he gropes me, makes out with me” over 45 takes. She assures that the events took place in front of Jane Birkin, who was still in a relationship with the director at the time, 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. In an interview with Le Parisien, Wednesday April 10, he assured that he had “never had an intimate relationship with Judith Godrèche” and had “never been attracted to her”. “I was living at the time with Jane (Birkin, editor’s note), with whom I was in love. Nothing happened with Judith either in an office or anywhere else,” he told the daily.
Judith Godrèche filed a complaint against Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon on February 6, 2024. The following day, an investigation was opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office on February 7, 2024. It specifically concerns “the offenses of rape of a minor under 15 by a person in authority, rape, violence by a cohabitant, and sexual assault of a minor over 15 by a person in authority, all of the facts reported having taken place between 1986 and 1992”. The investigations were entrusted to the Brigade for the Protection of Minors. The two directors were summoned on July 1, 2024 with a view to being placed in police custody.
Although 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 have spoken out against the two directors she denounces. Isild Le Besco denounces a controlling relationship exercised by Benoît Jacquot when she was 16 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 kissed her by force in a stairwell, on the fringes of the filming of the film A child of you in 2011.