French film producer Juliette Favreul Renaud, a former committee member of France’s Collectif 50/50 gender equality group, was acquitted by a Paris court on Tuesday of charges of sexually assaulting an actress.
Nadège Beausson-Diagne (Plus Belle La Vie) accused Favreul Renaud of trying to touch her intimately under her skirt while drunk during a dinner party organized on the fringes of a Collectif 50/50 board meeting in March 2022.
There were no witnesses to Beausson-Diagne’s accusation but other guests at the dinner reported seeing the actress in a state of shock.
Favreul-Renaud, whose credits include Virginie Despentes series Vernon Subutex, was tried in mid-March of this year on charges of “sexual assault while intoxicated”.
The accusations against her led to the near implosion of the Le Collectif 50/50 in April 2022, after the entire administrative board quit amid infighting over the best way to deal with the incident.
The organization, which has played a seminal role in pushing the gender equality debate and seeking ways to stamp out sexual and physical harassment within the cinema world in France, has since been relaunched under a new management team.
Favreul Renaud denied the charges at her trial in a Paris court in March, while her lawyers Céline Lasek and Fanny Colin called for the procedure to be cancelled saying the investigation into what happened was “sloppy, unfair and unbalanced”.
The public prosecutor had requested eight months in prison as well as penal-imposed care and a ban on contacting the plaintive.
Neither Favreul Renaud nor Beausson-Diagne was present at Tuesday’s acquittal hearing.
