JOURNALIST and writer Ruth Baza has reported the French actor Gerard Depardieu to the police in Torremolinos for raping her in Paris 28 years ago.
Baza said she was assaulted when she working for the Cinemania magazine and travelled to France to interview Depardieu ahead of the premiere of his latest movie, Colonel Chabert.
They met at the offices of the production company in Paris and the interview lasted more than an hour.
Ruth Baza says that at the end, the French actor started to kiss her on the face and lips ‘with frenzy and put his hand on her groin’.
Speaking to the La Vanguardia newspaper, Baza said: “Suddenly I felt his hand on my chest and then on my crotch, I couldn’t move, I disconnected from my body because it had invaded me.”
“I didn’t feel anything, I just remember the smell of alcohol and nicotine in my mouth, I don’t know how long it lasted,” Baza explained who also claims that the actor penetrated her with his fingers.
The journalist said she forgot what happened until last April when she remembered the incident after hearing news of complaints made by 13 women against Depardieu.
Back in 1995, she referred to her time with the actor, when she returned to Spain and spoke to the Cinemania editor, Javier Angulo.
Angulo told the EFE news agency that Baza said that the interview had been ‘very unpleasant’ and that the actor had even thrown a motorcycle helmet at her head.
“I was traumatised,” Angula recalled but added that Baza did not want to go into specific details about her ‘mistreatment’ but that ‘she never said it was any type of sexual assault’.
The reputation of Depardieu, 74, has been tainted in the last year by the formal accusation of two women for sexual assault and for having been publicly singled out by more than a dozen others.
In addition, a video was released earlier this month that is part of an unreleased documentary directed by Yann Moix, in which the actor made sexist and obscene comments.
A few days later, France’s Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, announced that the withdrawal of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest distinction, awarded to Depardieu in 1996, would be considered.
The actor’s family said he is being subjected to ‘an unprecedented persecution’ over the leaked sexist comments and described him as someone that is ‘very modest, delicate and even prudish in private life’.
