Daniela Elstner, managing director of Unifrance, has filed a police complaint against French singer-songwriter and actor Patrick Bruel over alleged attempted rape and sexual assault.
The exec’s complaint was confirmed by the Mediapart investigative news website alongside reports of six others who claimed they had suffered alleged sexual assaults by Bruel between 1992 and 2019.
Mediapart said that a second complaint for alleged rape had also been a lodged against Bruel, with the incident alleged to have taken place in 2012 at the Dinard British Film Festival, where he served as president of the jury. According to AFP, prosecutors in the Breton town of Saint-Malo have now started a formal investigation into a woman’s claims, made in September 2024.
Bruel’s lawyer Christophe Ingrain told AFP that the singer “maintains he never rejected a refusal (to have sex), never forced anyone into a sexual act or relationship.”
Mediapart asserted that the new complaint from Elstner concerned events that allegedly happened at a French film festival in Acapulco, Mexico in 1997 when she was a young assistant at Unifrance. She told the website that Bruel forced himself on her, pushing him into his car where he sexually assaulted her. Elstner said she was driven Bruel’s room, but managed to escape after a struggle.
In Mediapart’s report, it noted that this was not the first time Bruel has been publicly accused of sexual assault. In 2019, five women working in luxury spas across France accused him of sexual violence, but the cases were dismissed due to lack of evidence. One accuser told Mediapart she felt “deeply humiliated and hurt” after her allegations were dismissed and she was attacked by Bruel’s fans.
At the recent Berlin Film Festival, Elster was made Officer of the Legion of Honor for her decades-long commitment to championing French cinema worldwide. The ceremony, hosted by French ambassador François Delattre, was attended by industry figures including Berlinale chief Tricia Tuttle, Venice Film Festival boss Alberto Barbera, and U.S. distributors including Michael Barker from Sony Pictures Classics.
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