New complaints for rape against Patrick Bruel will be filed in the coming days, announced Tuesday the lawyer of TV host Flavie Flament, who herself accuses the French singer and actor of rape when she was a minor.
“We are going to file new complaints for rape against Mr. Patrick Bruel who is presumed innocent until the investigating judges have ruled,” said Corinne Herrmann.
Patrick Bruel, 67, is already the target of four investigations for rape in France and a judicial investigation in Belgium for sexual assault.
He denies the charges against him.
Flavie Flament, for her part, filed a complaint last week, accusing Patrick Bruel of having raped her in Paris in 1991 when she was 16 years old.
She spoke, in an interview broadcast Monday on the independent investigative site Mediapart, of “an absence, a total blackout” after drinking tea at the artist’s home.
Encouraging women to speak
“It is a scenario of chemical submission,” affirmed Mr. Herrmann, for whom, despite a possible prescription of the facts, it is necessary to “demonstrate that all the cases which have been denounced or part of the cases hold water and will be upheld by justice”.
Questioned on public television Tuesday about this affair, French government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said that women victims should be encouraged to speak out, “even decades after” the facts.
“We must continue to provide extremely clear messages in public speech that encourage women to speak out even decades later,” Ms. Bregeon declared on France 2.
In a publication on Instagram on Sunday, Patrick Bruel claimed to have “never forced a woman”, “drugged, manipulated or sought to subjugate anyone” and denied having “never used (his) notoriety to abuse anyone and obtain non-consensual relationships”.
He also assured that his relationship with Flavie Flament had been “brief” and “was neither violent, nor constrained, nor devious”.
“He defends himself and that’s normal,” Mr. Herrmann reacted on Tuesday. “But I appeal to all women who have been raped or assaulted. We always hear these types of arguments.”
Patrick Bruel, who is currently playing at the theater in Paris, is due to begin a tour on June 16 which will take him to numerous French cities, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada.
A petition, supported by feminist associations and which had collected more than 20,000 signatures as of Tuesday morning, calls for the cancellation of these concerts.
