Patrick Bruel in legal turmoil: the French singer and actor is the subject of an investigation for rape and has been the target, since last week, of another complaint, for attempted rape and sexual assault. He vigorously denies it. The complaint, filed in Paris, and the investigation, opened in Saint-Malo (Brittany), were revealed on Wednesday by the investigation site Mediapart and confirmed to AFP by sources close to the case and by the Saint-Malo public prosecutor’s office.
Mediapart also reports the testimonies of six other women for sexual violence between 1992 and 2019 – one was a minor at the time of the sexual assault she denounces. This article “creates a character and a system that never existed,” Christophe Ingrain, Patrick Bruel’s lawyer, responded to AFP.
The singer of “Place des Grands Hommes” and “Casser la voix”, aged 66, “claims to have never overstepped a refusal, never forced a gesture or a sexual relationship”, continued his advice. “On a large part of the facts that would be discussed” in the article, “justice has already ruled,” underlined Me Ingrain, referring to two investigations opened following complaints from two masseuses and closed without further action in December 2020.
In Perpignan (south), a masseuse in her thirties had accused the singer of sexual assault during a massage session in a hotel in July 2019. He had also been targeted by a preliminary investigation for sexual exhibition and sexual harassment after accusations, in 2019, from another masseuse at a hotel in Corsica.
During these investigations, investigators had heard other women accusing him of sexual assault, sexual exhibition or sexual harassment, until 2008. Patrick Bruel had also been the subject of a report by the Swiss authorities, also classified. Except that at least two new complaints have been filed since then and one led to the launch of investigations in Brittany.
“Need for liberation”
In Saint-Malo, a complaint was filed on September 30, 2024, a source close to the matter confirmed to AFP. This woman accuses Patrick Bruel of rape in October 2012, on the sidelines of the British Film Festival in Dinard (west), where he chaired the jury.
It is this complaint which led to the opening of an investigation, confirmed by the Saint-Malo public prosecutor’s office. According to the close source, the artist has not yet been questioned by investigators.
The complaint for attempted rape and sexual assault was filed on March 12 by Daniela Elstner, the current general director of Unifrance, an organization responsible for promoting French cinema internationally, according to another source close to the case. According to Mediapart, the alleged facts date back to November 1997 during the French Film Festival in Acapulco (Mexico). Daniela Elstner was then an assistant at Unifrance.
Why filed a complaint last week? “Her approach today is less a desire for judicial conviction than a need for release, for her, and for all the others,” explained her lawyer, Jade Dousselin, contacted on Wednesday by AFP.
Daniela Elstner “came to see me for the first time in 2019, in order to discuss, within the framework of the institution for which she was responsible, the emerging subject of #MeToo in France,” said Me Dousselin. “At the time of understanding together the necessary and complex balance between the freedom of speech and respect for the presumption of innocence, she told me, with enormous emotion, her personal story,” says the lawyer.
In Acapulco, composer and producer Maïdi Roth, 27, told Mediapart that she shared a shared taxi with the singer. “I didn’t know him, he put his hand on my thigh, he tried to kiss me by force,” she said. “He insisted, I pushed him away, he insisted. I ended up telling him that my boyfriend was waiting for me outside the taxi. He told me he wasn’t jealous. It stunned me.” “Looking back, I understood that it had nothing to do with seduction or feelings, I was just an object to possess,” she said.
