What were the allegations against Gérard Depardieu? Case against French actor dropped due to statute of limitations

French actor Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu, professionally known as Gérard Depardieu had come under fire after a plethora of SA allegations against him surfaced in an investigation conducted by French investigative website Mediapart in April of last year. One of the 13 women who accused the actor of SA, actress Hélène Darras had her complaint dismissed due to a technicality.

Darras' complaint had exceeded the statute of limitations. The actress had accused the actor of groping her on the set of the 2008 film, Disco. Apart from this, the actor had also been accused of r*pe, harassment, and assault by more than a dozen women.

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The Gérard Depardieu allegations

French actor Gérard Depardieu is quite the controversial figure at the moment having been accused of s*xual harassment and assault by 13 women, in an investigative report prepared by the French investigative website Mediapart, that ran in April of last year. One of the 13 women who filed a complaint against the actor was French actress Hélène Darras.

Darras accused Depardieu of harassing her at the set of 2008's Disco. In a Complément d'Enquête interview, the actress accused the actor of groping her private parts without consent and even asking her to his dressing room. She stated, as translated by Deadline:

"He looked at me as if I were a piece of meat. I was wearing a very tight dress. He came up to me and then passed his hand over my hips and buttocks."

She added:

"I was an extra. I hadn’t even finished theatre school. I wanted to be an actress and I didn’t want to be blacklisted at 26,"

Hélène Darras' complaint which was filed last September was dismissed by French prosecutors because it exceeded the statute of limitations. According to Deadline prosecutors said that Darras had decided to file an individual complaint after she was interviewed on behalf of the ongoing investigation of the allegations against Gérard Depardieu by another French actress, Charlotte Arnould.

Arnould had filed a lawsuit against Gérard Depardieu in 2018 and he was even charged with r*pe but the case was dropped in 2019 due to insufficient evidence. However, the case was reopened in 2020 and the actor was once again charged with r*pe and s*xual assault.

Additionally, according to a Variety report, Spanish journalist Ruth Baza also claimed that she filed an official complaint against Depardieu in Spain only last month for allegedly assaulting her during a 1995 interview. The interview and the assault in question allegedly took place in Paris.

1995 is not as far back as the allegations go as French actress Emmanuelle Debever, who passed away last December also accused the actor of assaulting her on the set of the 1982 film Danton. Reports indicated that the actress had taken her own life.

The actor directly addressed the allegations against him in an open letter published in the French outlet Le Figaro. The actor stated, as translated and reported by Deadline:

"Today, I can no longer sing Barbara because a woman who wanted to sing Barbara with me accused me of r*pe. I finally want to tell you my truth. I have never, ever abused a woman,"

Deadline reported that the Barabra reference alludes to Charlotte Arnould, who had allegedly first approached Gérard Depardieu hoping to work with him on a tribute show for the legendary French singer, Barabara. The actor further wrote in the letter that hurting a woman would be like kicking his mother in the stomach. He alleged in the letter:

"A woman came to my house for the first time, with a light step, going up to my room of her own free will. She says today that she was r*ped there. She came back a second time."

He added:

"There has never been any coercion, violence or protest between us. She wanted to sing Barbara’s songs at the Cirque d’Hiver with me. I told her no… She filed a complaint."

Regarding his on-set behavior, Gérard Depardieu wrote that he had pushed limits in between takes to "get a laugh" but not everyone laughed. He apologized if he had hurt anyone and asked them to excuse him for behaving like a "child who wanted to have fun in a gallery".