AFP Paris

Paris

Updated Wednesday, January 31, 2024-22:45

Three women accused the influential French psychoanalyst

Gérard Miller

of

sexual assault and rape, some during hypnosis sessions, in an investigation published Wednesday on the

Elle

magazine website

.

The magazine exposed the story of the journalist and theater director

Muriel Cousin,

who claimed to have been

touched during a hypnosis session in 1990,

when she was 23 years old. At that time it did not occur to her to "file a complaint" because "at that time it was not done."

Another woman reported

rape during a similar session in 2004, when she was 19 years old,

after having attended a television program in which the famous psychoanalyst participated.

According to her, the events occurred at Miller's home, after a game based on hypnosis. "I can't move anymore. I'm a doll that they undress and they can do whatever they want," she said.

Additionally,

a woman who worked as a babysitter for the psychoanalyst in 1993,

when she was 19, also reported being sexually assaulted when he was driving her home in his car.

According to

Elle

, an actress in the film "Terminale" (1998) in which Miller was a screenwriter, "would have suffered a

sexual assault under the pretext of a hypnosis session

at the psychoanalyst's home, on the couch in his office."

Gérard Miller, who does not deny having had relations with these women, rejects the accusations.

"Nothing I perceived indicated to me that they wanted to put an end to the situation,

because otherwise it would have ended right then and there," he wrote on the social network X.

He also stated that

he never practiced hypnosis in his office or home,

but always in public. According to him, what occurred in private were "basic tests" and "he or she who agreed to submit was not at all hypnotized, he or she remained perfectly conscious and in full control of his or her faculties."

"I am convinced that

I never forced anyone,

taking literally any modesty or rejection, especially when I began the path of seduction," he said in his message.

An interview that Gérard Miller conducted in 2011 with French filmmaker Benoît Jacquot

for a documentary

recently came to light .

In it, the filmmaker spoke about his relationships with young actresses, including

Judith Godrèche,

then a minor, before a conciliatory Miller.

The psychoanalyst had to justify himself: "

Today, I could no longer conceive the same film, because we are no longer in this collective blindness,"

he declared to the France 5 network at the beginning of January.