Following a complaint from director Jacques Doillon, whom she accuses of sexual violence, the French actress is indicted for defamation.
“I thought my ability to make things light would take over.” It is with these words that Judith Godreche announced that she had been indicted for defamation on her Instagram account. This preliminary notice follows the complaint filed by Jacques Doillon last February. In a press release sent to AFP, her lawyer denounced “vile” comments made by the actress on her Instagram account.
On February 6, Judith Godrèche herself filed a complaint against Jacques Doillon for “rape of a 15-year-old minor by a person in authority”. Speaking to France Inter two days later, she recounted two attacks that she said she had suffered from Jane Birkin’s ex-husband.
She says she was raped during film testing, but later reveals the attack happened while filming a love scene for the film The 15 year old girlby and with Jacques Doillon.
An Instagram post at the origin of the complaint
Jacques Doillon has always denied the accusations against him, assuring Le Parisien that he “never” had “an intimate relationship” with Judith Godrèche. Heard with Benoît Jacquot by the Minor Protection Brigade last June, Jacques Doillon’s police custody had been lifted for medical reasons. Benoît Jacquot is indicted for marital rape and rape of a minor by a person in authority.
But it is not for the complaint filed against her that Jacques Doillon accuses the actress of defamation. The actress, at the origin of a new #MeToo in French cinema since the beginning of the year, has since spoken out on the various cases of sexual violence that she was able to denounce (and others who are shaking up French cinema) on his Instagram account. On February 21, 2024, she quotes an article from Télérama in a story on her Instagram account, before writing: “In 2022, this newspaper writes that Doillon’s specialty is filming with children”. “One sentence is missing: “Who he sleeps with””.
“Daring to publicly assert, as she did again on February 21, that he would have “slept with children” who acted in his films is despicable and beyond comprehension,” reacted her lawyer in the press release transmitted to AFP the next day. Speaking to Le Parisien, Jacques Doillon believes that “this accusation goes beyond all limits. It is truly infamous.”