‘Mission: Impossible’ star Emmanuelle Béart reveals she was victim of incest

By Jack Guy, CNN

(CNN) — French film actress Emmanuelle Béart has revealed that she was a victim of incest, continuing a national reckoning with child sexual abuse in France.

Béart, a multi-award-winning star at home who is best known to international audiences for her appearances in “Manon des Sources” (1986) and “Mission: Impossible” (1996), says in a new documentary that she was sexually abused between the ages of 10 and 14, CNN affiliate BFMTV reports.

Béart tells her story as part of the documentary, “Un silence si bruyant” (“Such a loud silence”), which she co-directed. It is scheduled for release on French TV channel M6 on September 24.

Her co-director, Anastasia Mikova, spoke at a press event for the film on Tuesday, telling attendees that Béart’s father – the singer Guy Béart – was not the person who abused her, according to BFMTV.

Mikova went on to say that Béart did not want to name her abuser for “family reasons.”

During the film, which tells the stories of four other victims, Béart says it was her grandmother who “saved” her from the abuse.

A video message from Béart was also played during Tuesday’s event, BFMTV reports.

“I didn’t want to speak, I wanted to make space for others to speak,” she said. “Faced with them, their honesty, their bravery, I thought that I should speak too.”

Béart also discussed the documentary in an interview with Elle magazine, published Tuesday.

“This silence, which is first imposed by the person that rapes you, this silence makes a terrible noise within you and takes all kinds of forms,” she said.

Charlotte Caubel, France’s secretary of state for children, praised Béart for speaking out in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

“I salute the bravery of Emmanuelle Béart and those who testify alongside her. We need to raise awareness about this scourge which continues to destroy so many children,” wrote Caubel. “Every three minutes a child falls victim to sexual violence. Let’s break the silence.”

The issue of incest and child sexual abuse has come to fore in France in recent years after an accusation in a prominent family prompted a national reckoning.

Lawyer Camille Kouchner wrote a book, “La Familia grande,” published in January 2021, in which she accused her step-father, leading French intellectual Olivier Duhamel, of abusing her twin brother starting when he was 14.

Duhamel is a Socialist former member of the European Parliament and a renowned political pundit who also headed the governing board of Sciences Po, one of France’s leading universities.

“Being subjected to personal attacks, and in an attempt to preserve the institutions in which I work, I terminate my functions,” Duhamel wrote on Twitter shortly after the accusations surfaced. This coincided with his quitting the governing board of Sciences Po as well as leaving roles in an intellectual club and a political science publication. Duhamel later deleted the tweet and his Twitter account.

The Paris Prosecutor’s office announced it was opening an investigation into Duhamel for “rape and sexual assault by a person having authority over a 15-year-old minor.” CNN reached out to Duhamel’s attorney for comment at the time but did not receive a reply. The investigation was subsequently dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, BFMTV reported.

The Duhamel scandal led to hundreds of purported victims coming forward on social media under the hashtag #MetooInceste. French people took to Twitter to share harrowing stories of childhood abuse at the hands of parents and family members and how that trauma – and the accompanying sense of shame and isolation – often persisted well into their adult lives.

Facing Incest, an NGO supporting abuse victims, said 10% of French people had experienced incest, according to a representative survey of 1,033 French adults aged 18 and above, interviewed online November 4-5, 2020 by the Ipsos polling agency. “It is a mass crime we are talking about,” the non-profit said.

In April 2021, French lawmakers adopted legislation that defines sex with a child under 15 as rape, and makes it punishable by up to 20 years in jail, similar to many other Western nations, Reuters reported.

Prior to the change, prosecutors pushing for a rape conviction were required to prove that sex was non-consensual, according to Reuters.

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CNN’s Sandrine Amiel and Pierre Bairin contributed to this report.