France prosecutors want pop icon Patrick Bruel charged over alleged sexual abuse

Actor Patrick Bruel poses on the red carpet for the movie 'Promises' at the 16th edition of the Rome Film Fest in Rome, Sunday, Oct. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

PARIS, France -- French prosecutors said Wednesday they had requested pop icon Patrick Bruel be charged and placed in pre-trial detention over nine allegations of sexual abuse including rape and sexual assault.

The 67-year-old, a major figure in French pop culture with multiple top‑selling albums and dozens of film appearances, has denied any wrongdoing.

He is the latest top French celebrity to face investigators in the wake of the #MeToo movement, after film legend Gerard Depardieu was handed a suspended 18-month prison sentence last year for sexually assaulting two women on a film set.

Bruel, a heartthrob whose face was plastered on teen magazines in the early 1990s, has spent 48 hours in custody after being detained on Monday to answer questions after multiple allegations.

The prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre said it thought he should be charged over nine of them.

“The public prosecutor has requested the opening of a judicial investigation against him and that he be charged over acts of rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment involving nine victims committed between 2010 and 2019,” it said.

The prosecutor “requested that he be placed in pre-trial detention”, it added.

It said that the complaints of another 13 people accusing him of rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment from 1992 to 2008 had been added to the file handed over to investigating magistrates, even if they “appeared to be as beyond the statute of limitations at this stage”.

Investigating magistrates were later on Wednesday to decide whether to charge the singer.

‘Never forced a woman’

Bruel -- who in 1998 was briefly a world poker champion -- protested his innocence last month, saying in an Instagram post that he had “never forced a woman.”

He then said he would be cancelling all concerts until September.

His lawyers on Monday said in a statement he would answer all questions and “provide all the elements necessary to demonstrate his innocence.”

His accusers include Daniela Elstner, the current director of Unifrance, a company promoting French cinema abroad.

In March, she formally accused Bruel of attempted rape during a film festival in Mexico when she was a 26-year-old intern at Unifrance in 1997.

“This is a real first legal victory for the victims,” her lawyer Jade Dousselin told AFP after the prosecutors demanded charges.

Several new allegations against the star have been reported since Monday.

Lawyer Myriam Guedj Benayoun on Tuesday said a new complaint would soon be filed against the singer for the alleged attempted rape of a 19-year-old at his home in 2000.

Another lawyer, Corinne Herrmann, has said two women filed rape complaints against him on May 27 and June 3.

Investigative news outlet Mediapart said the women were a former beauty queen who accuses Bruel of raping her in 2008 and a physiotherapist who alleged he committed rape in 2000.

‘Outrageous’

His other accusers include French television presenter Flavie Flament, who last month accused him of raping her in 1991 when she was a minor.

She told AFP on Monday that her case was not one being looked into by investigators this week, but she criticized what she described as a slow judicial system.

“Three weeks after my complaint was made public, Patrick Bruel is in police custody,” she told AFP on Monday.

“What is truly outrageous is that before me, there were women who for months -- for years -- tried to make themselves heard, and it took the media coverage of my complaint for things to move forward,” she added.

At the height of his popularity, a period dubbed “Bruelmania” in French pop culture, teenagers saw in the singer a masculine ideal, with enthralled fans gathering outside places he was thought to be in Paris.

Bruel seemed to enjoy his image, in 2000 saying on television: “I’m easy to seduce, but not easy to keep.”

By Marin Lefevre and Daniel Hoffman, AFP