Marilou Berry: “I'm not happy about my uncle's misfortune”: Femme Actuelle Le MAG

Marilou Berry was she right to take a stand for her cousin? To remain silent was in any case impossible. For nearly a month, the daughter of Josiane Balasko and Philippe Berry has been caught in the heart of a controversy, despite herself. And for good reason, his uncle, the actor Richard Berry, is accused of rape and sexual assault by his daughter, now aged forty-five, Coline Berry Rojtman. Asked about it in Paris Match, twenty-four hours after the revelations of World, Marilou Berry had also shared her testimony: "Coline told me everything. I spoke to Richard at a family reunion. He was very angry, very upset. He replied that Coline was crazy, that the behavior of "this woman" was shameful. Now this woman ’was his daughter, and if everything was wrong, as he maintained, why didn't he go and confront her?”, she had declared. A strongly criticized position.

"I believed Coline and I never stopped believing her"

In addition, a large number of Internet users reacted to this testimony by insinuating that her silence during all these years made her "partner in crime". Monday 22 February 2021, in the columns of Release, Marilou Berry explained: "I have always been on the side of the weakest. For me, it was impossible to doubt a victim's word: I believed Coline and I never stopped believing her", she confided. The actress also insisted on her cousin's free will to file a complaint against her father: "At the beginning, she made the choice not to file a complaint … Who am I to not respect this choice?" About her uncle, Josiane Balasko's daughter wants to be very transparent: "I do not rejoice in the misfortune of my uncle. On the other hand, what makes me happy about this story is that after spending almost forty years carrying this burden, Coline is no longer alone".

In the same interview, Marilou Berry compared her activist commitment to the association #WeAll, founded by Caroline de Haas, with her position following Coline Berry's accusations: "What good would it be for me to yell at Place de la République with #NousToutes if I'm not able to cleaning up my own family ? (…) It was one of the first movements that made me want to put my visibility at the service of a cause, that of violence against women. With what my cousin went through, it made perfect sense ", she explained before concluding: "For me, the main thing is to educate people. Today, there is still a lot of leniency towards sex offenders in our country. We must explain the consequences of pedophilia (…) repeat that this is no longer possible until it changes ".

Read also : “Stitches, loss of the eardrum…”: Marilou Berry denounces the violence committed by Richard Berry on Coline's mother, Catherine Hiegel