The French actor Gérard Depardieu has been ordered to stand trial over accusations that he raped a woman at his Paris home over seven years ago, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Mr. Depardieu is accused of raping the woman, the actress Charlotte Arnould, on Aug. 7 and Aug. 13, 2018, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.
A prolific actor who was once one of France’s most popular leading men, Mr. Depardieu has become a symbol of sexual violence in France’s movie industry in recent years after multiple women accused him of harassing, groping or assaulting them, accusations that he has consistently denied. He was convicted of sexual assault in May in a separate case.
On Tuesday, Ms. Arnould, now 29, wrote on Instagram that she was “relieved” by the trial order after “seven years of horror and hell.”
“I think I have a hard time realizing given how huge this is,” she wrote.
The actress filed a police complaint shortly after her encounters with Mr. Depardieu, a family friend who she said had invited her to his home to provide advice and assistance as she sought to move from a dancing career into acting. A police investigation into her accusations was initially dropped in 2019 after prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to support them, but it was picked up again in 2020 after Ms. Arnould invoked a legal measure to have it resumed.
Lawyers for Mr. Depardieu and Ms. Arnould did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
More than 20 women have accused Mr. Depardieu of some form of sexual assault or misconduct. Several women filed complaints with the police, although some cases were dropped because they were past the statute of limitations.
Mr. Depardieu has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the accusations against him, arguing that although he has a bawdy personality, especially on film sets, he has never forced himself on any women.
In Ms. Arnould’s case, he has said that their encounters were fully consensual.
“A woman came to my house a first time, light-footed, going up to my room of her own free will,” Mr. Depardieu wrote in an open letter in Le Figaro newspaper in October 2023. “Today she says she was raped there. She came back a second time. There was never any coercion, violence or protest between us.”
Mr. Arnould has said in interviews with the French news media that she returned to Mr. Depardieu’s home not because their relation had been consensual, but because she wanted to confront him.
Mr. Depardieu can still appeal the trial order, which was issued by an investigative judge. But it brings him much closer to the possibility of another highly publicized and scrutinized court appearance.
In May, a court in Paris found him guilty of sexually assaulting two women working on the set of a film in which he was starring in 2021. Mr. Depardieu received a suspended sentence of 18 months and has appealed the verdict.
Experts and advocates called it a watershed moment that they said showed that France’s resistance to the #MeToo movement, especially in cultural and artistic circles, was eroding.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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