Prosecutor calls for 18-month suspended sentence for Gerard Depardieu
The actor, 76, is accused of having groped a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director on a film set in 2021.
Paris’s public prosecutor has requested that French actor Gerard Depardieu be found guilty and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence on the last day of a trial over accusations that he sexually assaulted two women who were working on a film with him.
The actor, 76, is accused of having groped a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant director during filming in 2021 of the movie Les Volets Verts or The Green Shutters. He denied the accusations.
“You’re going to declare Gerard Depardieu guilty of these sexual assaults,” the prosecutor told the court. He also requested a fine of 20,000 euros (£16,692).
The prosecutor denounced Depardieu’s “total denial and failure to question himself”. The actor showed no apparent reaction.
Even though prosecutors requested an 18-month suspended sentence, Depardieu faces up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros (£62,653) if convicted.
The verdict, decided by a panel of judges, will be rendered on May 13.
Earlier on Thursday, the plaintiffs’ lawyers called Depardieu a sexual predator and a “misogynist” in their final plea.
The set dresser’s lawyer, Carine Durrieu Diebolt, said that he committed misconduct for decades towards “little people” in the cinema world.
“Maybe you think he’s a great actor and you love his films,” she said. “Depardieu is also a sexual predator.”
His status as a world-renowned actor made him both an artistic and an economic power in the film industry, in contrast with the plaintiffs, who risked being blacklisted if they spoke up, Ms Durrieu Diebolt said, denouncing what she called a “system of impunity”.
“Depardieu, when he’s touching women’s bodies, he’s exercising his power over them,” she said.
On Tuesday, Depardieu acknowledged that he had used vulgar and sexualised language with the set dresser who accused him of sexual assault. He said he grabbed her hips during an argument, but denied that his behavior was sexual.
The lawyer for the other plaintiff, Claude Vincent, started her plea with a minutes-long list of obscene words and other vulgar expressions rarely heard in a courtroom, saying: “That’s how Gerard Depardieu behaves on a film set, that the atmosphere he’s imposing around him.”
“No, you can’t separate the man from the artist,” she said. “He is Gerard Depardieu, a misogynist amid misogynists.”
The plaintiff, a film assistant, said that Depardieu groped her buttocks and her breasts during three separate incidents on the film set.
Mr Vincent noted that Depardieu defended director Roman Polanski, accused in the still-unresolved Los Angeles criminal sexual assault case that prompted him to flee to Europe in 1978.
Speaking on Wednesday about his career and life, Depardieu mentioned Polanski as being “persecuted” for 50 years.
“Some would say I’m from the old world. Certainly,” he said.
Depardieu has rejected the accusations since the beginning of the trial on Monday, saying he is “not like that”.
The actor is being tried by a panel of three judges, not a jury, which is normal for such cases. The judges do not issue their verdict right away, but generally deliberate for weeks or months.
