A Spanish journalist has been added to the list of allegations of rape that, since April, have fallen on the actor Gérard Depardieu. This is Ruth Baza, journalist, writer and collaborator of various media who on Thursday reported to the National Police – as La Vanguardia advanced yesterday – events that occurred in 1995, when the victim was 23 years old and interviewed the actor in Paris for Cinemanía magazine. In the complaint, Baza recounts how the actor kissed her face and neck, and penetrated her with his fingers through her clothes.
The new complaint coincides with the recent news of the suicide of one of Depardieu’s alleged victims: the actress Emmanuelle Debever, who threw herself into the Seine on December 6 after leaving a farewell note. The 60-year-old actress reported in 2019 that she had been attacked by Depardieu during the filming of the film Danton in 1982. It is not the only case that currently involves the name of the French actor. Following the publication on the public channel France 2 of the documentary La chute de l’ogre (The fall of the ogre), where misogynistic and sexist comments from the actor are heard, the French Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, has announced that it will consider withdrawing the Legion of Honor from her. In September the actress Hélène Darras filed a complaint for an assault that would have happened during the filming of the movie Disco, in 2007, when the actress was 26 years old. Previously, also the actress Charlotte Arnould, whose father was a friend of the actor, denounced two rapes committed at the Parisian home of the star, an accusation confirmed by the Court of Appeal in 2022.
Ruth Baza, a collaborator throughout her career in media such as El Mundo, Interviú, GQ or Cosmopolitan, decided to take the step after recovering the experience of some facts that were hidden for almost three decades in her memory It all came back in April, when Baza read in The New York Times the news about the complaint that thirteen women had filed against Depardieu accusing him of sexual harassment. Reading the information caused “an inner click” that led her to re-read the personal diary she has been writing since she was a child, where she found the account of the events.
It was on October 12, 1995 when Baza went to Paris to interview the French actor on the occasion of the premiere of the film Colonel Chabert. “It was a great opportunity, the bombshell interview I was waiting for, and on top of that with an actor I’ve always liked,” Baza noted in the October 17 entry in his personal diary. The meeting with the protagonist of films such as Cyrano de Bergerac, Novecento or Asterix
At the end of the meeting, Depardieu started kissing her and put his hand on her crotch. “He hugged me, he was very tall and strong, and I was very thin, I couldn’t run away, I was trapped”, said the journalist – who has suffered from anorexia and chronic depression since the age of 11 – in an open letter published in June. “He kissed me on the lips deeply, and then on my face in a frenzy, he kissed me again and again. Suddenly I felt his hand on my chest and then on my crotch, I couldn’t move, I disconnected from my body because it had invaded me”.
“The worst thing is to have forgotten it all these years, I am unable to remember how I left Paris and arrived in Madrid”, explained Baza in a telephone conversation with La Vanguardia as he recalled his meeting with “that Depardieu monster”. The journalist is aware that the path of the investigation is uncertain, since sexual crimes are statute-barred after 20 years, but she hopes that her report will help other people “who have been abused in the past and to whom the memory returns one day”, and also “helping myself to overcome it”.
