One of France’s best-known showbusiness stars, Patrick Bruel, has been placed under judicial investigation on several counts of rape and sexual abuse, in the latest fallout from the Me Too movement.<\/p>\n
After two days in custody in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre, the 67-year-old singer and actor went before a panel of four judges on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
They confirmed the state prosecutor’s request that Bruel be placed under investigation in several cases of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault and harassment. A judge is deciding whether to keep him in custody.<\/p>\n
Bruel has consistently denied the charges against him. <\/p>\n
Being placed under investigation means that an examining magistrate will now look more deeply into the charges against Bruel, whose lawyers will have access to the prosecution file. <\/p>\n
In most cases, the procedure results in a trial.<\/p>\n
Under French law, rape is defined as “any non-consensual act of penetration”.<\/p>\n
Feminist campaigners reacted to the news with satisfaction. <\/p>\n
The case against Bruel comes at a time of heightened sensitivity in France about judicial treatment of sex offences, after the murder of an 11 year-old girl called Lyhanna, whose suspected killer had been the object of several prior denunciations for abuse.<\/p>\n
Alongside actor G\u00e9rard Depardieu, Bruel is the most celebrated French figure to be targeted by accusations of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n
Depardieu, 77, was given a suspended sentence last year for sexual assault on a film set, and he has appealed against the conviction.<\/p>\n
Born Patrick Benguigui in Algeria in 1959, Bruel rose to fame in the early 1980s with songs like Marre de cette nana-l\u00e0 (Had enough of that chick). His strong voice and dark, brooding looks led to a wave what was termed at the time Bruelmania.<\/p>\n
He has also appeared in more than 30 films, and was recently on stage in a theatre production in Paris. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of France’s best-known showbusiness stars, Patrick Bruel, has been placed under judicial investigation on several counts of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-632635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}