Due to lack of a leading actor, Gérard Depardieu’s trial did not take place. The accused, 75 years old, was expected on Monday, October 28 in front of 10my room of the Paris Criminal Court, to be tried for two sexual assaults that occurred, according to the complainants, during the filming of the film Green shuttersby Jean Becker, in 2021.
There, in the front row, were the two civilian parties, an assistant director and a decorator. Also present in his support were Anouk Grinberg, actress of the film, and Charlotte Arnould, the first woman who, in 2018, filed a rape complaint against the actor (the Paris prosecutor’s office requested, in August, her referral to the Prosecutor’s Office). criminal court in this case. In front of the court, about 200 protesters against violence against women formed a noisy welcoming committee. Gérard Depardieu did not come.
The request for referral had arrived at the court four days earlier, supporting medical certificates from the cardiologist and diabetologist. It was a question of “blood pressure” and of “sciatica”of “lumbarthrosis” and of “cruralgia”of a “Significant risk of hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia”in short, a deterioration in their state of health “related to the approach to the audience”unfortunately incompatible with its presence.
Faced with a fait accompli, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt and Claude Vincent, lawyers for the two plaintiffs, took serious note of this last-minute request: “No one has any interest in the hearing taking place without him being present. » With the same sobriety, the prosecutor demanded that it be rescheduled “at short notice”.
Twenty minutes of monologue
With a little less sobriety, Jérémie Assous, the actor’s lawyer, already certain of obtaining the dismissal he had come to request, launched into what his argument might have seemed like if the trial had been held, “taking a keen interest in the methods prosecutor’s investigation “totally dependent” and those of Half part who had revealed the matter, deploring “18 defense witnesses excluded” by the investigators and those whom he intends to bring to the stand, and provoking murmurs of disapproval in a crowded room by evoking the “contradictions” plaintiffs, and “pseudoaggression, hypothetical aggression, alleged aggression” that they had suffered.
“I remind you that you are filing a dismissal appeal”the president of the court reminded him after twenty minutes of monologue. In vain, since the argument on the quality of the procedure and on the merits of the case lasted an additional twenty minutes.
You have 13.98% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
