When her husband admitted to her that he was hiding behind the fake porn videos broadcast in her name on the internet, German actress Collien Fernandes “hesitated” at first to file a complaint, she said in an interview with AFP.
But her lawyer insists, taking the example of Gisèle Pelicot, the Frenchwoman who has become a world figure in the fight against sexual violence for having publicly testified to the rapes committed by dozens of men recruited by her ex-husband.
“It’s the Pelicot digital affair,” says the lawyer, recounts the 44-year-old actress, also a presenter and model.
“That sentence really stuck in my head, and I told myself that I couldn’t let him get away with that,” continues Ms. Fernandes, filming in Singapore and interviewed remotely by AFP from Berlin.
She reports fake profiles on social networks, “doctored” porn videos sent to contacts in her name, falsified nude photos, all ever more realistic due to technological progress and artificial intelligence… The actress had been living in a digital hell for a decade, without understanding the origin of this content.
And today she accuses her husband, the actor and host Christian Ulmen, 50, of having made 30 men, including some from her professional entourage, believe that they were maintaining a secret online relationship with her, sometimes for years, by sending them false naked images or by having telephone conversations of a sexual nature by altering her voice.
Rape scenario
Her husband confesses at the end of 2024, while they are in a hotel room in Hamburg. Collien Fernandes’ world collapses, and she takes refuge with their daughter at her sister’s house.
Her husband refuses to give her the names of the recipients of the messages: “He is too ashamed,” he claims, according to her.
During a dinner with a producer, she learns that he thought he had a sexual conversation with her on the Internet.
Then she comes across a fantasy scenario that her husband wrote and broadcast, in which she is raped, in tears, by 21 men.
“Seeing that someone who claims to love me can delight in a story in which I cry devastated me,” says Ms. Fernandes, who ended up divorcing a few months after her partner’s confession.
After these unbearable confessions, Collien Fernandes returns to the Gisèle Pelicot case. An “incredibly hard” affair, which resonates within her, to the point that she cannot read an entire article without “bursting into tears”, she says, on the verge of tears.
It is “the strength” that the Frenchwoman displays which gives her the courage to file a complaint, to put an end to the rumors concerning her, and to take up a fight, in the name of victims less visible than her of digital violence.
“I would really like to meet her,” explains the actress.
Death threats
When she told her story to the German weekly Der Spiegel in an article published on March 21, she aroused an outpouring of solidarity. But she also receives death threats.
The German prosecutor’s office declared that it had retained an “initial suspicion” against Mr. Ulmen, who disputes certain facts, in particular the accusations suggesting that he created and distributed fake pornographic videos (“deepfakes”).
The ex-spouses are also waiting to know whether it is in Germany or Spain, where they live, where their child goes to school and where the law regarding online violence is stricter, that the case will be processed.
The Fernandes affair also puts pressure on the German government of conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz to quickly develop a bill on online violence, particularly linked to deepfakes.
“I expect harsher sentences in Germany, to make the guilty understand that this is not acceptable!” exclaims the actress, who says she is “hugely touched” by the support of tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in recent weeks across the country.
How do you recover from such a betrayal of a loved one? The actress says she is rebuilding herself through “intensive therapy”. Many of the other victims she encountered developed “post-traumatic stress disorder.”
