France #MeToo movement: TV psychoanalyst charged with raping three girls

Magistrates have charged a top French psychoanalyst with sexual assaults on six women, allegedly raping three when they were minors.

Gerard Miller, who has been a regular radio and television commentator since the 1990s, is one of several prominent men to have been accused in France in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Investigating magistrates on Thursday charged the 77-year-old with abusing the six women between 2000 and 2020, including raping three when they were minors over the age of 15, the Paris prosecutor's office said.

He is also being investigated over the alleged rape of another minor in 2000, it said.

Miller has been banned from practicing, coming in contact with minors or appearing on television.

Neither Miller nor his lawyer immediately replied to an AFP request for comment, but he has previously denied all charges.

A first legal complaint was filed early last year.

"Following the initial complaint, around 20 women gave testimony to the judiciary, describing scenes of a sexual nature after a hypnosis session, an alcohol-powered evening, or under the pretence of professional meetings," the prosecutor's office said.

They were aged 14 to 25 at the time of the alleged assaults or rapes, it said.

Several cases had to be dropped because of the statute of limitations, it added.

They said he invited students and young women in television audiences to spend time with him and tried to assault them, often after giving them alcohol or hypnotising them.

Elle magazine and the Mediapart website early last year reported on accusations that Miller committed sexual offences from the 1990s to 2020.

Miller has said he "never forced anyone", and has denied practicing hypnosis in his office or at home. 

A series of similar allegations involving well-known men have rocked France in recent years.

In one case, actor Judith Godreche accused film director Benoit Jacquot, 25 years her senior, of raping her in a relationship that started when she was 14, charges he has rejected.

She has since become an icon of the French #MeToo movement and sparked debate within the culture industries on how to prevent abuse.

Screen icon Gerard Depardieu was in May convicted of sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021, and is to stand trial charged with raping an actress decades his junior in 2018. He has appealed both verdicts and denies any wrongdoing.