French actor Gerard Depardieu, 74, has denied allegations of rape and sexual assault against him. open letter in French newspaper Le Figaro under the title ‘Je veux enfin vous dire ma vérité’, which means: ‘I finally want to tell you my truth.’
“Never, never have I abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote, according to English-language reports from the news agency Agence France-Presse and the BBC. “Against the media court, against the lynching reserved for me, I have only my word to defend myself.”
The veteran actor was investigated for alleged rape in 2021 after a woman accused him of raping and assaulting her in Paris in August 2018. Depardieu’s lawyer told AFP at the time that his client “completely dispute(d)” the accusation.
Earlier this year, Depardieu was hit with new allegations of sexual assault or harassment by thirteen women, according to an investigation by French news website Mediapart. The actor denied any criminal conduct at the time through his Paris-based law firm Cabinet Temime. The company said some of the accounts in the Media part report appeared to be based on “highly subjective assessments and/or moral judgments.”
The open letter from Sunday evening Le Figaro It is the first time that Depardieu has responded directly to these accusations.
“I can no longer allow what I hear, what I have been reading about myself for several months,” he wrote, according to the BBC. “Hurting a woman would be like kicking my own mother in the stomach.” He also suggested that the woman who accused him of rape came to his room “of her own free will.”
