“How strange it is deep down to imagine being in this line of sight,” she confides. Actress Judith Godrèche, who says she was the victim of sexual violence by Jacques Doillon when she was a minor, announced on Tuesday that she was being indicted for defamation against the director.
“When you cry at home after receiving a notice of indictment for defamation linked to the complaint filed by your attacker, when the plumber is going to ring any minute to repair the boiler, when you try to be a good actress and act as if nothing had happened,” she wrote in a story published on her personal Instagram account early this afternoon.
The actress also takes the liberty of attacking Jacques Doillon’s lawyer, who, according to her, commissioned “someone to monitor” her Instagram account, and “sent”, since the filing of the director’s complaint, “warnings » to his own lawyer. “How strange it is deep down to imagine being in this line of sight,” she comments.
Director Jacques Doillon filed a complaint for defamation against the actress in February 2024, criticizing “profoundly offensive remarks” to her dignity and probity on Instagram. On the social network, Judith Godrèche had accused the filmmaker of “filming with children”, “with whom he sleeps”.
As a reminder, indictments are automatic in defamation proceedings, unlike traditional criminal proceedings. They do not include a magistrate’s opinion on the characterization of the facts denounced, and only the criminal court will have to rule on the subject at the end of the procedure.
A wave in French cinema
At the beginning of 2024, Judith Godrèche filed a complaint for rape of a 15-year-old minor against the directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, who both contest the accusations against them. The actress had a relationship with the first when she was only 14 years old, and he was 25 years older.
She had also denounced violence allegedly committed by Jacques Doillon when she was a teenager and was filming in his film “The 15-year-old Girl”, released in 1989. According to her account, the director would have changed the casting and the script to shoot a sex scene with her. She also accuses him of having abused her in private.
These revelations sparked a storm in the French cinema world, leading to other complaints against Benoît Jacquot, from actresses Julia Roy, and Isild Le Besco. Before the dissolution of the National Assembly, a parliamentary commission of inquiry against sexual violence in the sector was opened, during which Judith Godrèche was invited to speak.