The Gérard Miller affair now appears to be one of the largest cases of alleged sexual violence involving a public figure in France since the start of the #MeToo phenomenon. On October 2nd, after nearly 48 hours in custody, the psychoanalyst and star television and radio commentator of the 1990s was brought before a judge, who formally placed him under investigation for rape and sexual assault concerning six complainants, the Paris prosecutor’s office told Mediapart.
Gérard Miller, 77, who also has long associations with the radical-left La France Insoumise party, is being investigated specifically over three rapes of minors, one rape of an adult woman, one sexual assault on a minor and one sexual assault on an adult woman. The alleged offences are said to have been committed in 2001, 2004, 2019 and 2020. The youngest of the complainants was 14 at the time of the alleged acts.
“[He] has been placed under investigation for six of the offences mentioned in the initial statement of allegations,” said the Paris prosecutor’s office, referring to the initial complaints that surfaced against the media personality in 2024. “He was placed under the status of assisted witness [editor's note, an intermediate status in French law between that of a witness and a formal suspect] for one rape of a minor over the age of 15, allegedly committed in 2000.”
“He has been put under judicial supervision, with an obligation to post bail of sixty-five thousand euros, an obligation to undergo treatment, a ban on practising as a psychoanalyst, on carrying out any activity involving regular contact with minors, as well as working as a television commentator in public, a ban on contacting the victims and those mentioned in the case, and a ban on leaving the country,” the prosecutor’s office added.
Gérard Miller, who has so far not responded to Mediapart's requests for comment, benefits from the presumption of innocence, and since the start of the case has insisted he has “never forced anyone”.
According to Mediapart's information, the psychoanalyst answered no questions during his period of custody and questioning, exercising his right to silence and reserving his explanations for the investigating judge. On Thursday morning he had been brought before the judge from the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris, where he had spent the night. A search of his home has not so far uncovered anything to advance the investigation.
A total of 27 women have accused Gérard Miller of sexual violence, according to Mediapart's information, and the great majority of these alleged offences reportedly took place at the psychoanalyst’s home in east Paris.
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The case was triggered in January 2024 by revelations in Elle magazine and by Mediapart. 'Juliette' – not her real name - one of the women who spoke to us, filed a complaint on February 6th 2024 with the Paris prosecutor’s office, for acts allegedly committed in 1995. The prosecutor’s office then opened a preliminary investigation, which was handed to the Paris police's juvenile protection brigade.
“Following this first complaint, around 20 women came forward to the legal authorities, with accounts of episodes of a sexual nature after a hypnosis session, or a drunken evening, or under the pretext of a professional meeting. They were aged between 14 and 25 at the time of the described acts,” the Paris prosecutor’s office explained.
“Some of these acts, which may have been of a criminal nature, were found to be time-barred,” it added.
The investigation is now being conducted by an independent investigating judge. At the end of this investigation, the judge will decide whether or not to charge the psychoanalyst and send him for trial. As well as being an academic and psychoanalyst, Miller became a popular public figure in the 1990s working alongside presenter Laurent Ruquier, on France Inter and Europe 1 radio stations, and then on France 2 television and alongside the well-known journalist and TV host Michel Drucker.
The Paris prosecutor’s public statement requesting that the psychoanalyst be placed under investigation had meanwhile provoked strong emotion among the women who gave evidence during the initial probe. Aude G. is one of the six complainants whose allegations led to Gérard Miller being investigated; in her case, a rape that allegedly took place in 2001 at the psychoanalyst’s Paris home. In her final year of secondary school and aged 17 at the time, she had approached him for an article for her school newspaper.
Contacted by Mediapart on Thursday afternoon, she said she learned the news “with astonishment”. She explained: “I've got mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel great relief because at last we're beginning to be heard. On the other, I can't stop thinking of all the women who gave evidence but whose cases are time-barred.
“Their suffering is as great as ours, the acts they complain of are as serious as ours,” she stressed. “The legal system has made its selection, and I find that very harsh. They will obtain no redress, even if we know that justice never fully makes amends, and even though we know we're not fighting for ourselves alone, but for everyone.”
Juliette, the first woman to file a complaint, over acts dating from 1995 and therefore time-barred, gave Mediapart her lengthy reaction to the news in writing. “Being the first to file a complaint comes with the hope that I encouraged other victims to do so. My self-respect clings to that because my case is time-barred and as far as the legal system is concerned I am therefore not a victim. At the trial, I may possibly be a witness. My story keeps on being played down,” she wrote.
“Today, I also hope to move forward with the justice system and with society, which I want to trust to free humanity from this gender-based aberration, to break away from a system that lets a rapist act X times without any qualms, comfortably positioned under the spotlight,” she continued.
Magali, who spoke as part of Mediapart’s investigation and later gave evidence to the police, spoke of “satisfaction and relief” at these legal developments. “It's emotional because we'd been waiting more than a year for this questioning in custody and for the opening of a judicial investigation. It gives us strength that we can say to ourselves that there are 27 of us, this figure is staggering but also helps encourage people to speak up,” she told Mediapart. For this woman in her forties, the opening of a judicial investigation could “give the strength to other women to file a complaint”, particularly those who until now had only spoken to the press.
Recurring MO
Some of the allegations against Gérard Miller are recent, as late as 2020. Yet, on several occasions, the former television commentator has insisted that the #MeToo phenomenon changed his outlook. In January 2024, invited on the television programme “C ce soir” at a time when actress Judith Godrèche was attacking sex abuse in the film industry, he declared that the “revolutionary” #MeToo movement had made it possible to break free from a “collective blindness”.
A month later, questioned as part of Mediapart's investigation, Gérard Miller explained that “since #MeToo, women’s voices have called into question the way in which relations between men and women are structured in our society”, insisting that he had “begun to understand that many men of my generation who, like me, in their youth and even afterwards, claimed they wanted to break radically with the old world, had in fact perpetuated a cultural system in which male desire predominated over female desire”.
The allegations of rape and sexual assault that have appeared in the media in this case number in the dozens, and follow a recurring modus operandi. Most of these women claimed to have been sexually assaulted or raped by the former media commentator. Others said they quickly left his home, sensing a “trap”.
But the ritual described was almost always the same: very young women said that Gérard Miller invited them to his large flat, often after approaching them in the audience at his shows, or at Paris 8 University. Most of the time, they then drank alcohol. To some, he allegedly suggested “hypnosis experiments” or “relaxation”.
All said they accepted the invitation out of admiration for the television figure, for the learned professor, or the documentary filmmaker, or out of interest in psychoanalysis.
Simply a “game”
Ever since the start of the case, Gérard Miller, who long taught psychoanalysis at Paris 8 University, has firmly denied the allegations. In April, he complained of not having been “either heard or even summoned” since the start of the initial investigation, and that meanwhile “hundreds of articles on these accusations have been published in France and abroad”.
Gérard Miller attacked what he called “media hype” and a failure to respect his presumption of innocence, claiming he could not “defend myself”. “I have no access to the file, I don't even know which investigative unit is handling the case, [or] how many complaints have been filed against me,” he noted regretfully in a statement sent to news agency AFP (Agence France-Presse).
Questioned by Mediapart in February 2024, the psychoanalyst said he did not “for one instant doubt the emotion, anger and suffering” of these women, but he insisted he had never put any pressure on them. Without denying the meetings with the young women who accuse him, including minors, he maintained that he had always made sure he had the consent of the women with whom he had sexual relations.
He also insisted he had “never practised hypnosis at my home” – speaking of a mere “game” or “test” with women who “remained perfectly conscious” – and that no one had “ever” been at his house in a situation in which they were “unable to interact, either after drinking something or in any other circumstances”.
He admitted, however, that he had not at the time realised that the “asymmetry” that existed between him, a “man with power”, and these “younger” women was a “deal-breaker”. This would “without any doubt, lead me to act differently today”, he wrote in his response then to Mediapart.
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- The original French version of this story can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter