French prosecutors demand that director Benoit Jacquot face rape charges

Film director Benoit Jacquot is set to face trial after French prosecutors filed rape charges against him, according to reports in France.

Doillon was arrested in Paris along with fellow French filmmaker Jacques Doillon earlier this week over accusations they both sexually abused actress Judith Godrèche when she was a child.

Godrèche alleges that Jacquot raped her in 1986, when she was 14, and that Doillon sexually assaulted her on the set.

Both men denied the accusations.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, prosecutors have requested charges against Jacquot in connection with the rape of two other actors. One of the actors claims the rape took place between 1998 and 2000 and in 2007 during a relationship that began with the director when she was a minor, while the other actor accused him of sexually assaulting her between 2013 and 2018. Jacquot has denied the accusations.

Prosecutors have not yet filed a motion to press charges in connection with Godreche’s allegations, the newspaper reported.

Doillon was released Tuesday evening on medical grounds, the report said, citing the prosecutor’s office, but added that no decision had yet been made on charges.

Godreche first went public with her accusations earlier this year. “It was a hallucination,” she told radio station Doillon. “He got rid of the actor and took his place, and suddenly he decided there would be a sex scene between him and me.”