French actress Emmanuelle Beart says she was incest victim as a child

PARIS – French actress Emmanuelle Beart was a victim of incest as a child, she said in a documentary presented on Tuesday, without identifying her abuser.

Beart, who has starred in dozens of films and television productions over the past 50 years, co-directed the documentary, which was screened at a news conference on Tuesday and will be broadcast to viewers on France’s M6 channel on Sept 24.

The 60-year-old has been famous in France for decades, thanks to performances in Manon Of The Spring (1986), A Heart In Winter (1992) and Nelly And Mr Arnaud (1995).

She reached global audiences with roles in Mission: Impossible (1996) and 8 Women (2002).

The attacker was not her father Guy Beart, co-director Anastasia Mikova told reporters on Tuesday.

Speaking for the actress – who was not present – Mikova said Beart would not name her abuser because that is not “the approach of the film”.

The incest started when Beart was 10 and continued until she was 14, she said.

The documentary, called Such A Resounding Silence, includes the stories of Beart and four other incest victims.

In a video message to Tuesday’s news conference, Beart said that she had initially not wanted to talk about herself, only about other victims.

“But their honesty and their courage made me want to speak out too,” she said.

In the documentary, her voice is heard off-screen, addressing her abuser: “Since my father, my mother and my friends didn’t notice anything, you could do this again, and you did, over four years.”

She was “saved” by her grandmother, Beart said.

Some 160,000 children become victims of sexual assault every year in France, and 5.5 million French adults suffered sexual abuse during their childhood, according to Ciivise, a government-created commission for the protection of victims of sexual abuse. AFP