French prosecutors have opened a rape inquiry after the actor Judith Godrèche filed a complaint against the arthouse film director Benoît Jacquot, who she says groomed her when she was 14 and he was 39.
A formal complaint was filed against Jacquot, 77, for the alleged rape of a minor by a person in a position of authority. The French police’s specialist juvenile protection unit is handling the inquiry, which will investigate several allegations, including rape of a minor by a person in a position of authority, rape, domestic violence and sexual assault.
The alleged crimes are punishable by 20 years in prison. It is possible that the statute of limitations has expired. The events are alleged to have taken place between 1986 and 1992.
Jacquot, one of France’s most prominent directors, told Le Monde he denied all allegations. He said he had been “very much in love” with Godrèche and they had lived together. He said: “It was me, without irony, who was under her spell for six years.”
Godrèche, 51, has said she was groomed by Jacquot as a child actor. Her parents had divorced and she has described herself as having been vulnerable. She first met the director when he called her in for a casting call in 1986 when she was 14.
She has said his first question to her was to ask her name and his second was to ask whether she had a boyfriend. She told Le Monde on Wednesday he had groomed her and she remained “in his grip” for six years, starring in two films he directed, Les Mendiants (The Beggars) in 1988 and La Désenchantée (The Disenchanted) in 1990.
“It’s a story similar to stories of children who are kidnapped and grow up without seeing the world, and who can’t think ill of their captor,” Godrèche wrote in a statement for the police juvenile protection unit, quoted by Le Monde. She said in her statement that she “didn’t want his body”.
She told the newspaper that Jacquot had once come to collect her from school, taken her to the cinema and put her hand on his genitals. She said he told her he was a “pervert” and at 14 she did not know the meaning of the word. In Godrèche’s statement to police, which Le Monde quoted, she said that on another occasion, at his home, he took her up to his bedroom and told her to lie down on his bed. “It was bizarre to do that with an adult,” she wrote.
She described later moving in with him and feeling she had been cut off from friends and the world. She alleged violence in their relationship and said he would not allow her to use contraception.
Godrèche recently won praise in France for writing, directing and starring in the hit series Icon of French Cinema, a surreal comedy about a French film star who returns to Paris after a decade in LA expecting a glorious comeback. The series cuts between the modern day and flashbacks to the 1980s, telling a story about a child actor being groomed by a director.
The series provoked renewed debate in France about how the French cinema establishment had failed to face up to the #MeToo movement.
Godrèche at first did not name Jacquot as the director referenced in her series. But after footage emerged from a 2011 TV documentary in which Jacquot boasted about their relationship being a “transgression” and cinema providing a “cover” for it, she decided to name him.
Last month Godrèche told the Guardian of the importance of speaking out about the grooming of teenagers by older men in positions of authority. She said: “These people usually come to you as protectors. They become a parental figure.”
In 2017, Godrèche was one of the first actors to speak to the New York Times about the film producer Harvey Weinstein, who she said had attempted to assault her in a hotel at the Cannes film festival when she was 26. But she told the Guardian that the French film industry was still protecting powerful men and that people in the industry were scared to speak out.
She said: “People who are still in this industry are still not coming forward. And I’m not here to carry out a witch-hunt, but you might expect a little compassion … It’s bizarre for everyone that I’m suddenly coming out and telling this story. The omertà in the industry is still so strong.”