Leading film directors Benoit Jacquot and Jacques Doillon have reportedly been detained by French police for questioning over sexual abuse allegations.
Jacquot, 77, and Doillon, 80, were seen arriving at a Paris police station on Monday morning, accompanied by their lawyers.
Actress and director Judith Godreche has formally accused Jacquot of rape and Doillon of sexual assault when she was a minor.
The 52-year-old has alleged that Jacquot had an unhealthy ‘hold’ over her during a relationship with him that started when she was 14, from 1986 to 1992.
She has accused Doillon of abuse on set when she acted in one of his films. The men have each denied the allegations.
Fellow actor Isild Le Besco, 41, has also formally accused Jacquot of raping her between 1998 and 2007 during a toxic relationship that started when she was 16 and he was 52.
Actor Julia Roy, 34, has also filed a complaint against him for sexual assault, during ‘a context of violence and moral constraint which lasted several years’, a source close to the case said.
The director’s lawyers said there had been no need to detain them in order to question them, and stressed they should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Jacquot’s lawyer, Julia Minkowski, said her client would ‘finally be able to express himself before the law’.
Doillon’s attorney, Marie Dose, said no legal criteria could justify his being detained for questioning ’36 years’ after the incident alleged by Godreche.
The sources close to the case said their interrogation could include a confrontation with the person or persons accusing them.
Godreche on Instagram wrote she was deeply moved that police had finally summoned the two directors.
‘I’m crying… From all this… I don’t know if I have the strength but I will have it. I will have it… For her,’ she wrote, posting a picture of her teenage self next to Jacquot, 25 years her senior.
Godreche was 14 when she met Jacquot, then 39, in 1986 on the set of his film Les Mendiants.
Le Monde reports that they went on to share an ‘intimate relationship’ for six years.
The actress has since accused him of predatory behaviour and of ‘violent rape of a minor under 15 years old committed by a person in authority’.
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