The last week of November, when French cinema was in embarrassment after the indictment for rape of Sofiane Bennacer, on the poster of the film Almond trees, by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Anne Lassalle’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Journalists, especially. She doesn’t like that very much, media coverage. A little out of shyness and a taste for discretion, but also because, this time, the lawyer judged “too violent” coverage of this case for his client, one of the plaintiffs.
However, this is not the first time that she has been confronted with the media: for four years, Anne Lassalle, 43, has been the lawyer for dozens of women who have denounced sexual violence in the theater world.
It started by chance. In 2018, a student at the University of Franche-Comté reports stories circulating about her theater teacher to her parents. She suffered nothing but her story amazes and scandalizes the parents who, by mail, report the facts to the management. A teacher of the scientific and technical university studies diploma (Deust) in theater at Besançon, Guillaume Dujardin offered his students ” work ” outside of class hours. “He made them believe that to progress and have the competition of the great theater schools, it was necessary to free the body, to awaken sexually”, describes Anne Lassalle.
The girls want to talk but they don’t know how to go about it. The director Anne Monfort, who intervenes punctually at the University of Besançon, advises them of the name of a lawyer accustomed to cases of violence against women. Her name is Anne Lassalle, she lives in Les Lilas, in Seine-Saint-Denis. And the entertainment world is not unknown to him: his companion, Jean-Baptiste Verquin, is himself an actor.
Historical decision
When she receives the plaintiffs, the lawyer is shaken: what they say is serious. And Guillaume Dujardin has been a teacher for a long time. “They were ten civil parties, but, in reality, they are more numerous. Many ex-students from the university of Besançon wrote to me to tell me that they had experienced the same thing, years before. »
In October 2020, the teacher is found guilty of sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual blackmail. He was sentenced to two years in prison by the Besançon court, a sentence which will be confirmed on appeal in December 2021. A historic decision and an important step forward in an environment where silence is the rule. “We don’t realize it, but not everyone has easy access to a lawyer. These young students, who could not go to Paris at the Cours Florent, came from simple backgrounds. »
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