Actor Nicolas Bedos sentenced to one year in prison including six months suspended for sexual assault

Nicolas Bedos was sentenced this Tuesday in Paris to one year in prison including six months suspended on probation and to an obligation of care for sexual assaults on two women in 2023. The 45-year-old actor and director, who was absent during the deliberation , on the other hand, was acquitted “for the benefit of the doubt” by the criminal court for acts of sexual harassment in 2018.

The criminal court ordered that the firm part of his sentence be carried out at home, under electronic monitoring. He also imposed an obligation for addictological and psychological care, a ban on contact with the two victims, and requested that the actor be included in the file of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses (Fijais).

The prosecutor had requested twelve months in prison with a two-year probationary suspension, with compulsory treatment due to “the repetition of the facts”. His lawyer Julia Monkowski immediately announced that she would appeal “this unfair judgment”. “I am both stunned and shocked by the deliberations that I have just heard,” she reacted.

An “unacceptable” conviction

“This conviction, this severity is completely unprecedented, unjust, totally unacceptable,” declared Me Julia Minkowski. “We are in a society where for a kiss on the neck or a hand placed on jeans in the middle of a nightclub, we find ourselves condemned to wearing an electronic bracelet for a period of six months,” he said. she added.

“He has been treating this alcohol problem for almost two years,” insisted Julia Minkowski. His family and professional life have been profoundly disrupted by this procedure, he wishes to turn the page after relentless media harassment, an unprecedented lynching. »

“This decision says something important, that alcohol is never and can never be a screen to exonerate oneself, (…) it is an aggravating circumstance, it cannot explain and even less justify an act of sexual assault”, reacted for his part Maître Tewfik Bouzenoune, the lawyer of the young woman who filed the complaint. He said he was “satisfied with a decision which, in principle, advances the issue of the fight against sexist and sexual violence”.

As for her client, “I think she is satisfied if only with the very principle of recognition of victim status.” During the hearing, the very emotional complainant recounted the evening, with sobs in her voice. “I saw who this man was, his eyes scared me,” she explained.

Two other women heard

“I lost everything in this story. I am not a sexual abuser, I never will be. I don’t impose, I don’t insist. It is not part of me, of everything that constitutes me. We can talk about heaviness, flirting. There is no sexual intention,” Nicolas Bedos defended himself on the stand at the end of September. “I don’t remember anything, it’s a blackout,” he also declared on numerous occasions.

The trial, which should have taken place in February, was adjourned to allow the statements of two other women to be examined. One of them, a waitress in a Parisian bar, told investigators that Nicolas Bedos had grabbed her by the waist and kissed her on the neck on the night of May 11 to 12, 2023, while the latter was drunk.

The other alleged act, qualified as sexual harassment, dates back to June 2018. The director is suspected of having touched the stomach of a young woman and of having asked her to kiss him. Neither woman filed a complaint. This case is part of a series of cases shaking the French cinema sector, marking a turning point for the freedom of victims to speak out.