Gérard Depardieu to go on trial over sexual assault allegations

Gérard Depardieu will face a criminal trial in October over the alleged sexual assaults of two women on the set of a film in 2021, prosecutors have announced.

Depardieu (75), who previously has denied any wrongdoing, was questioned for several hours on Monday by officers at a police station in the 14th arrondissement of Paris.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office later said in a statement that the actor has been “summoned to appear before the criminal court”.

A trial will start in October over the alleged sexual assaults committed in September 2021 against “two victims, on the set of the film Les Volets Verts [The Green Shutters]”, the statement said.

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Mr Depardieu, through his lawyers, has denied all allegations.

In 2020 police placed him under formal investigation for rape and sexual assault in another case, after the actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her at his Paris home in 2018.

Ms Arnould, who went to the police more than five years ago, accused Mr Depardieu of rape and sexual assault on two occasions at his home in Paris in 2018, when she was 22 and Mr Depardieu, a friend of her father, was 70.

In an open letter to Le Figaro in October, Mr Depardieu denied all allegations, saying any encounter with Ms Arnould had been consensual. He said he was the victim of a lynching orchestrated by a “media court”, and wrote: “Never, ever have I abused a woman.”

Another sexual assault complaint was filed last year by Hélène Darras, an actor, who said Depardieu groped and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot. The case has been dropped for having been past the time limit for bringing charges.

Mr Depardieu, one of France’s best-known actors, has appeared in more than 170 films and gained international fame with English-language roles.

Feminists and politicians on the left reacted angrily in December after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described the actor – who was then under formal investigation for rape and facing fresh scrutiny over sexist comments filmed in a TV documentary – as the target of a “manhunt”.

“You will never see me participate in a manhunt ... I hate that type of thing,” Mr Macron told the broadcaster France 5 when asked about the possibility of stripping Mr Depardieu of a state award after the documentary showed footage of sexist and inappropriate behaviour by the actor. – Guardian