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French film star Gerard Depardieu has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during the filming of a movie in 2021 and will serve an 18-month suspended prison sentence.
He was also fined €29,040, and the court requested that he be registered in France’s national sex offender database.
Depardieu, 76, was convicted of groping two female employees: a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant during the filming of Les Volets Verts.
The set dresser said Depardieu trapped her between his legs in a narrow corridor before grabbing hold of her hips and groping other parts of her body, including her chest. She also said he used an obscenity to ask her to touch his penis and suggested he wanted to rape her.
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She told the court that the actor’s calm and cooperative attitude during the trial bore no resemblance to his behaviour at work.
The other defendant said that Depardieu groped her buttocks and breasts on three separate occasions on-set.
The case was widely viewed as a post-#MeToo movement test of how French society and its film industry would handle allegations of sexual misconduct involving high-profile individuals.
Depardieu, who has denied the accusations, did not attend the hearing in Paris. His lawyer said the actor would appeal the decision.
Following his conviction, Carine Durrieu Diebolt, the set dresser’s lawyer, said, “It is the victory of two women, but it is the victory of all the women beyond this trial.”
“Today, we hope to see the end of impunity for an artist in the world of cinema,” she continued. “I think that with this decision, we can no longer say that he is not a sexual abuser. And today, as the Cannes Film Festival opens, I’d like the film world to spare a thought for Gerard Depardieu’s victims,” she concluded.
Depardieu told the courts he has made more than 250 films throughout his illustrious career, propelling him to the pinnacle of French cinema. In 1991, he received an Oscar nomination for his performance in Cyrano de Bergerac as the eponymous lead.
In recent years, the actor has been accused of misconduct by more than 20 women, but only the sexual assault case went to court. Several other cases were dropped due to a lack of evidence or a statute of limitations.
During the four-day trial in March, Depardieu denied the accusations, saying he’s “not like that.”
Nonetheless, he acknowledged that he had used vulgar and sexualized language on the film set and that he grabbed the set dresser’s hips during an argument. He denied that his behaviour was sexual.
The court’s three-judge panel decided that Depardieu’s explanations were “unpersuasive” and “not credible” and stressed both accusers’ “constant, reiterated and substantiated declarations.”
The court also said Depardieu’s defence team employed an “aggressive” defence strategy and considered their comments in court to have caused more harm to the plaintiffs, therefore justifying higher fines.
Depardieu’s lawyer, Jérémie Assous, said he regretted that the court “considered that questioning the accusations is an additional assault,” adding that this type of defence, “even in this type of trial, is no longer accepted.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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