FRENCH movie star Gérard Depardieu has been taken into custody over allegations he sexually assaulted two women.
Depardieu, 75, who is already being investigated for several similar crimes including rape, has now been accused of molesting staff on two separate film sets.
AFPFrench actor Gerard Depardieu has been accused of molesting staff on two separate film sets[/caption]
Axiom Films InternationalLast year, an actress who made first claims against Depardieu killed herself by jumping into the Seine[/caption]
Emmanuelle Debever worked in the 1982 film Danton alongside Depardieu
Depardieu is alleged to have molested one woman on the set of Les Volets Verts, The Green Shutters, in September 2021.
He has also been accused of molesting another woman on the set of Le Magician et les Siamois, The Magician and the Siamese, in March 2014.
An investigating source said on Monday: “Mr Depardieu was summoned to appear at a Paris police station today, and is currently in custody.
“He is being questioned about two alleged sexual assaults that took place in 2014 and 2021.”
Depardieu has denied all of the accusations against him.
The first complainant said that she was attacked on the set of Les Volets Verts, in what she described as a “wolf trap”.
The 53-year-old woman, named only as Amelia, accused Depardieu of using his legs to wrap himself around her, touching her intimately, and using crude language against her.
It has also been alleged that a witness was able to pull the disgraced star off of the woman.
According to the BFM news outlet, Depardieu later said: “I apologise because it is necessary to apologise.”
Although he later continued to refer to Amelia as “a slut”, a source told the BFM.
The second complainant has accused Depardieu of attacking her while Le Magician et les Siamois was being filmed in Doué-la-Fontaine, in the west of France.
The 24-year-old production assistant claimed that the actor molested her while making obscene comments when the crew met at his Paris home.
Amelie’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, said evidence pointed to “sexual assault, harassment and abuse”.
Ms Durrieu-Diebolt also represents Charlotte Arnould, 28, who said the actor raped and sexually assaulted her in August 2018.
The CCTV footage shows the disgraced star perform a sex act on Ms Arnould at his Paris mansion which he insists was consensual.
Ms Arnould renounced her right to anonymity at the end of 2021 after Depardieu was charged with rape.
But within a few days of his indictment, the shamed actor was back on set at the Seine River location for the police drama Maigret and The Dead Girl.
Despite facing numerous allegations, Depardieu has denied the claims that he is a serial sex abuser, saying: “I am neither a rapist nor a predator”.
In October, the actor penned an angry open letter to the French press in which he claimed to be the victim of “lynching”.
Last year, Depardieu was embroiled in a string of scandals after two women filed a complaint against him and one of his alleged victims was found dead.
Emmanuele Debever, 60, – who accused him of allegedly sexually assaulting her – plunged into the River Seine in an apparent suicide in December 2023.
The actress died on the same day a documentary Gérard Depardieu: The Fall of the Ogre aired allegations that Oscar-nominated actor had groped her when she was 19.
The documentary also features Helene Darras, who claims she was assaulted by Depardieu when she worked as an extra on the 2007 movie Disco.
She alleges: “He is unmanageable. He looks at me as if I were a piece of meat.
“I have an ultra-tight dress, he pulls me closer to him by the waist, then he runs his hand over my hips, over my bum.”
Paris prosecutors have confirmed that Helene, 43, reported Depardieu in September.
In December 2023, Spanish journalist and writer Ruth Baza filed a criminal complaint in Spain against the film star.
Baza, 51, accused Depardieu of raping her when she interviewed him in Paris in 1995.
In the same month, French president, Emmanuel Macron, was under fire for defending the shamed star.
Mr Macron appeared on a TV chat show and said he detested the actor being subjected to a “manhunt”.
Even before the first allegations emerged in 2018, Depardieu was a polarising figure.
This self-confessed brawler relieved himself in a bottle on a plane, fondled a female reporter at an awards ceremony, appeared drunk during an interview with Jonathan Ross on BBC One in 2005 and became a Russian citizen to avoid paying taxes in his homeland.
In April this year, 13 women made allegations of inappropriate behaviour against Depardieu in an investigation by French online newspaper Médiapart.
They included US actress Sarah Brooks, who was aged 20 when she worked with him on the Netflix series Marseille in 2016.
She claimed that Depardieu made a “groaning noise” as he put his hand down her shorts.
A public outcry led him to cancel some public appearances and feminists protested during one of his stage shows.
AFPThe disgraced star faced multiple accusations of sexual assault which he vehemently denies[/caption]
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