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French movie star Gérard Depardieu was found guilty Tuesday of sexually assaulting two women on one of his film sets in 2021 — with the judge ripping him for not grasping the “traumatic” impact of his sick antics.
The actor, 76, was slapped with an 18-month suspended prison sentence and will be put on the national sex offender list after he was convicted of groping a 54-year-old set decorator and a 34-year-old assistant while filming “The Green Shutters” (“Les Volets Verts”).
During the four-day trial, Depardieu — a towering figure in French cinema before his downfall — denied the accusations leveled against him, insisting he’s “not like that.”
The star was accused of groping the set decorator all over her body after he trapped her between his legs when she tried to squeeze past him in a narrow corridor on set in 2021.
She testified that the star grabbed her hips and started “palpating” her behind before grabbing her chest.
“I was terrified, he was laughing,” she recounted during the trial.
The woman added that Depardieu used an obscene expression to ask her to touch his penis and suggested that he wanted to rape her.
Meanwhile, the assistant testified that the actor had groped her buttocks and her breasts during three separate incidents on the same set.
Depardieu, who wasn’t in court for the verdict, acknowledged during the trial that he had used vulgar and sexualized language on the film set — but denied that his behavior was sexual.
He argued on the stand that he didn’t consider placing a hand on a person’s buttocks sexual assault and that some women were too easily shocked.
“He does not seem to have grasped either the concept of consent or the deleterious and traumatic consequences of his behavior towards the women he assaulted,” Judge Thierry Donard said of Depardieu as he handed down the sentence.
In recent years, the actor — who has starred in more than 200 films over five decades — has been accused publicly or in formal complaints of misconduct by more than 20 women.
So far, only the recent sexual assault case has proceeded to court. A number of other cases have been dropped due to a lack of evidence or the statute of limitations.
Depardieu, for his part, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
“Never, absolutely never, have I abused a woman,” he wrote in an open letter in the daily Le Figaro newspaper in October 2023.
In addition to the suspended sentence, Depardieu was also ordered to pay a fine of roughly $32,350.
Depardieu’s lawyer said that his client would appeal the verdict.
With Post wires
English (US)