Sex abuse probe against top French psychoanalyst
French prosecutors said they are investigating accusations of rape and sexual assault
PARIS: French prosecutors said Friday they are investigating accusations of rape and sexual assault, including of minors, against top French psychoanalyst Gerard Miller.
The allegations are just the latest against top cultural figures that have given the French #MeToo movement momentum in recent months.
Prosecutors launched the probe on Thursday after receiving six complaints against the 75-year-old media personality and screenwriter of alleged abuse between 1995 and 2005, the prosecutor's office told AFP.
Miller, a regular radio and television commentator, did not immediately reply to an AFP request for comment.
A lawyer for three of the plaintiffs, Claire Lejeune, welcomed the investigation. "They look forward to being heard by the designated investigative service," she said.
Elle magazine and the Mediapart website had since January reported on alleged sexual offences by Miller from the 1990s to 2020.
'Never practiced hypnosis'
In the reports, four women accused Miller of raping them - in two cases when they were minors - and more than a dozen alleged he sexually assaulted them, charges he has denied.
They said he invited young women, including minors, to spend time with him and tried to assault them, often after giving them alcohol or hypnotising them.
Miller in a letter has rejected the accusations, saying he "never forced anyone" and there had been only relations between "consenting adults".
"I never practiced hypnosis, neither in my office with patients, nor more generally at home," he wrote.
Five of the six who have made a legal complaint have told their story to the media.
They include a woman who accused Miller of rape after a hypnosis session in 2004 when she was 19.
She told her story to Elle and filed a complaint on Wednesday.
A second woman filed a complaint on Friday last week after telling Elle Miller had sexually assaulted her at his home in 2001 after she met him on set of a television show when she was 15.
A third woman, who officially complained on Wednesday, has alleged Miller sexually assaulted her at his home during a hypnosis session in 2003 when she was 19.
Lejeune is representing the three women.
A fourth woman, now a psychoanalyst herself, on Tuesday filed a complaint accusing Miller of rape in 2001 when she was 17 and he was 53, Le Parisian newspaper reported. She said he forced her to perform oral sex on him.
A fifth woman on February 6 officially accused Miller of sexually assaulting her after she met him as a 21-year-old student of his in 1995, according to Mediapart.
It was not immediately clear who the sixth woman was.
'Transgression'
A series of similar allegations have been made in recent months against media and entertainment figures.
Prosecutors are investigating claims by actor Judith Godreche that director Benoit Jacquot, 25 years her senior, raped her in a relationship that started when she was 14. He has denied the claims.
Godreche has said that a 2011 documentary by Miller, in which Jacquot boasts his relationship with her was a "transgression", pushed her to finally speak up after decades of silence.
Film icon Gerard Depardieu, 75, has also been at the centre of criticism that the arts have for too long provided cover for abuse.
Depardieu was charged with rape in 2020, and faces more than a dozen other accusations of assault or harassment, all allegations he has rejected.
President Emmanuel Macron sparked an outcry in December when he defended the "immense actor" as innocent until proven guilty, and insinuated he was the victim of a "manhunt".
More recently Macron added that he should have emphasised the importance of women speaking up.