Trial of Gérard Depardieu: the absent actor, towards a postponement?

After the accusations of sexual violence to which he has been the subject since 2018, Gérard Depardieu must be tried for the first time. The trial takes place this Monday, October 28 in the afternoon, before the Paris criminal court. This was ordered after two complaints of sexual assault, which allegedly occurred on the set of the film The green shutters in 2021. Gérard Depardieu, who remains presumed innocent, denied the accusations while in police custody last April.

Last Friday, his lawyer Me Jérémie Assous told AFP that his client “intends to appear in court”. But change of program this Monday morning, a few hours before the opening of the trial scheduled for 1:30 p.m.: “Gérard Depardieu is extremely affected and, unfortunately, his doctors forbid him from appearing at the hearing,” explained the lawyer to Franceinfo microphone this Monday morning. The actor will “request a postponement” of the trial “so that he can be present”. Concretely, this means that the lawyer will ask that the trial be postponed “to a later date”.

Two women, one a third assistant director, the other a set designer, accuse the actor of having sexually assaulted them on the set of Jean Becker’s film. The first says that the septuagenarian would have “touched her buttocks and chest several times”. The second accuses Gérard Depardieu of having made “gritty” remarks to her before having “kneaded her waist, her stomach, going up to her breasts”. “Stuck between the thighs” of the actor, the attack would have ended after the interruption of the actor’s bodyguards. Anouk Grinberg, also an actress in the film, denounced “salaceries from morning to evening” on the part of the actor.

Before the trial, the testimony of the complainant

The interior designer wanted to testify at the microphone of Médiapart Thursday October 24, a few days before the start of the trial. She describes a state of “stunnedness” in the hours and days following the events, and having received support from the film team the day after the attack, including Jean Becker: “for him, he was not not mean and he probably wanted to flirt with me,” she relates. She then describes an “angry, contemptuous” Depardieu, who would not have apologized as she expected.

Trying for two years to forget the facts, the complainant nevertheless told our colleagues that “it was getting worse and worse, like a wound becoming infected”. “I realized that I could no longer remain silent. There was no way my silence could benefit an alleged rapist.”

Another trial soon?

Gérard Depardieu has formally denied all the accusations against him for six years. “Never, ever have I abused a woman,” he declared in an open letter to Le Figaro l’acteur, on October 1, 2023. His lawyer, Me Jérémie Assous, promised AFP that “the witnesses and the evidence that he will produce will demonstrate that he is only the target of false accusations”, affirming that the aim of the complainants is to “enrich themselves by 30,000 euros”. For her part, the plaintiff’s lawyer, Me Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, assures that she expects “justice to be the same for everyone and that Mr. Depardieu does not benefit from preferential treatment because he is an artist”.

So far, these two accusations are the only ones that have led to a trial. Last August, the Paris prosecutor’s office requested a trial in the context of the Charlotte Arnould affair, which accuses Gérard Depardieu of rape and sexual assault in 2018. However, the investigating judge must validate or not the holding of a trial.