Yahoo News Gerard Depardieu faces new sexual assault allegations from 13 women
Thirteen women have claimed they were sexually assaulted or harassed by Gerard Depardieu, the veteran French actor.
The group say Depardieu, who is already under investigation for alleged rape, put his hands in their underwear and made indecent remarks.
The alleged incidents occurred on film and TV sets over the last two decades, according to an investigation by the Mediapart news site.
Sarah Brooks, an American actress who appeared alongside the 74-year-old in the Netflix series Marseille at the age of 20 in 2015, told Mediapart that he put his hand down her shorts “while making a strange, loud groaning noise”.
She said: “He replied: ‘Huh, I thought you wanted to succeed in cinema.’ Everyone laughed, and so he then carried on. I felt awful, it was so humiliating.”
Actor ‘does not intend to address’ new claims
Another described Depardieu slipping his hand under her dress “to get to my knickers” before becoming aggressive when she pushed him away.
One said he had a “wandering hand” that moved to “grab me by the waist” and “ended up putting his hand on my bum in an insistent way”.
“Adults let an actor fondle my breasts in front of everyone,” another actress, who was 17 at the time, told Mediapart.
Such behaviour was allegedly often tolerated by other crew members, who sometimes remarked “Oh, it’s OK, it’s Gerard”, according to the claimants.
Depardieu, possibly France’s most famous – and infamous – living film star, denied the claims.
In 2018, the actress Charlotte Arnould brought rape charges against Depardieu, claiming that he sexually assaulted her twice. The case is still processing through French courts, despite an attempt by Depardieu to overturn the charges. He denies the accusations.
In spite of the controversy surrounding him, Depardieu has appeared in five films over the past year, including a new version of the detective series Maigret.
He “does not intend to address” the new claims, “which appear to mix very diverse topics, including some very subjective appreciations and/or moral judgments”, his lawyers said.
