France prosecutors want singer Patrick Bruel charged over alleged sexual abuse
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French singer and actor Patrick Bruel has been placed in pre-trial detention over nine allegations of sexual abuse.
PHOTO: AFP
PARIS – French prosecutors said on June 10 that they had requested pop icon Patrick Bruel to 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 in 2025 for sexually assaulting two women on a film set.
Bruel, a heart-throb whose face was plastered on teen magazines in the early 1990s, has spent 48 hours in custody after being detained on June 8 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 June 10 to decide whether to charge the singer.
Bruel protested his innocence in May, 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 June 8 said in a statement he would “answer all the investigators’ questions and will 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 June 8.
Lawyer Myriam Guedj Benayoun on June 9 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, said two women had 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.
His other accusers include French television presenter Flavie Flament, who in May accused him of raping her in 1991 when she was a minor.
She told AFP on June 8 that her case was not one being looked into by investigators this week, but she criticised 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 June 8.
“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. AFP