‘Neither a rapist nor a predator’: Accused of rape and sexual assault in 2020, actor Gérard Depardieu has condemned a “lynching” organized by a “court of the media”, following allegations made by actress Charlotte Arnaud, AFP reports.

“I can no longer agree with what I hear, what I read about myself for several months. I thought I didn’t care, but no, I really don’t. It all affects me. Even worse, it’s killing me,” the 74-year-old actor wrote in an open letter published in the opinion section of Le Figaro newspaper.

This long text, similar to a poem, is the first speech of the French actor after new evidence against him appeared in the spring of Médiapart.

“I have never, ever offended a woman,” he wrote.

Without naming her, Gerard Depardieu attacks Charlotte Arnaud, the actress who filed a complaint against him for two rapes in 2018.

According to him, “for the first time, a woman came to my house, walked easily, entered my room willingly. Today she says that she was raped there.”

“There was never any coercion, violence or protest,” he assures.

“If I’ve hurt or shocked anyone by trying to live intensely in the present, I never meant to do any harm, and please forgive me for acting like a kid who wants to have fun,” writes the actor, who insists , that he is “neither this nor the other”. neither a rapist, nor a predator.”

“In the court of the media, in the court of lynching reserved for me, I have only my word to speak against,” he concludes.

On December 16, 2020, Gerard Depardieu was charged with “rape” and “sexual assault” after the actress filed a complaint about two rapes at the star’s Paris home in late August 2018. In the summer of 2020, the investigation, initially closed by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office in June 2019, was reopened.

In April, Médiapart published the testimony of 13 women who accused Gerard Depardieu of sexual violence. The Paris prosecutor’s office noted during these revelations that “to date, no new complaint has been received.” The prosecutor’s office also said that the investigation, which began in July 2020 based on the complaint of this artist, is ongoing.