The Paris prosecutor’s office has requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence with a three-year probationary period and a €20,000 ($21,500) fine for actor Gérard Depardieu following his sexual assault trial this week related to events on a 2021 film shoot.
He also asked that Depardieu undergo psychological treatment and be placed on France’s sex offenders list.
The requested sentence concluded a tumultuous four-day hearing in Paris, which marked Depardieu’s first time in court against a backdrop of at least 20 public allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior against him.
This week’s trial was related to accusations of sexual assault against the actor by a set dresser and a third assistant director, alleged to have taken place during the shoot of Jean Becker’s The Green Shutters in 2021.
Depardieu could stand trial a second time in the coming months in relation to rape allegations by actress Charlotte Arnould, dating back to 2018, following a request by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office over the summer which is making it ways through the judicial system. The actor has denied the accusations.
In this week’s court hearing, the set dresser, referred to simply as Amélie, recounted how the actor had seized her with his legs and started kneading her up to the breasts, and growled: “Come touch my big parasol, I’m going to shove it up your pussy.”
The third assistant director, appearing under the pseudonym of Sarah, detailed how Depardieu had touched her buttocks and breasts on two occasions when she was accompanying him on set.
Depardieu repeatedly refuted both accounts, saying at one point that at the age of 76 he was “not into groping” and that his actions had been misinterpreted and never been intentionally sexual.
A number of women, who were not pressing charges, also gave evidence, including an actress who alleged Depardieu had shoved his hands into her knickers during a photocall on the set of Netflix show Marseille.
Actress Fanny Ardant, who co-starred opposite Depardieu in films such as The Women Next Door (1981) and Hello Goodbye (2008), also took to the stand to speak in the star’s defense, acknowledging he was flawed but also noting his genius as an actor.
Explaining his sentence request, prosecutor Laurent Guy pointed to the fact that the plaintiffs had stood by their original statements when questioned in court, while Depardieu had changed his version of events.
“We also have three eyewitnesses to the gestures made against Amélie at the crucial moment. This undeniably constitutes sexual assault,” he said.
Under French law, a judge will now deliberate on the sentence request. Going into the trial, Depardieu faced a sentence of up to five years in jail and a €75,000 ($81,000) fine.
The hearing comes hot on the heels of a number of high-profile sexual abuse trials in France in recent months.
These include the Gisèle Pelicot mass rape case; Adèle Haenel’s successful pursuit in the courts of director Christophe Ruggia for sexual assault on a minor, and the ongoing trial of Joël Le Scouamec, a former surgeon accused of raping and sexually abusing almost 300 underage patients.
Carine Durrieu-Deibolt, the lawyer for Amélie, referred to these cases in her final arguments on Thursday.
“What is in common between all these affairs, is silence. For decades, with regards to Gérard Depardieu, everyone knew,” she said, referring to wider accusations that the actor’s inappropriate behavior towards subordinates on set was well-known throughout the film industry.
She suggested that women who had been victims of the actor had kept quiet for fear of losing their jobs and being shut out of work in the future.
“There are reprisals… if you become the pain in the neck, they don’t recruit you anymore,” she said. “While he is an artistic force in cinema, with economic clout.”
Durrieu-Deibolt suggested there was a certain collective responsibility within the cinema world for what had happened.
“Amélie wasn’t aware of the facts of the case brought against Gérard Depardieu by Charlotte Arnould. Nobody told her about it on the shoot, no-one protected her, or distanced her from Gérard Depardieu,” she said. “There was a collective responsibility because women were left at the disposition of Gérard Depardieu.”
