Theatrical appearance, verbal ease and commitment to the left of the left after a Maoist youth, Gérard Miller, star psychoanalyst on TV sets for 25 years, is today the target of dozens of accusations of sexual violence which he contests.
After initial testimonies published at the end of January in Elle magazine, the 75-year-old psychoanalyst is accused by around fifty women, often much younger than him (and some of them minors), for acts ranging from inappropriate behavior to rape. . The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation.
“Certain that I have not committed any offense and ready to respond to each of the alleged facts, I now wish to reserve my word for the judicial institution”responded Mr. Miller on February 23 in a written statement.
In Elle, which published new testimonies on Thursday, and Mediapart, certain accusers assure that he used hypnosis to attack them in his Parisian mansion, which he denies.
Gérard Miller’s emaciated face, precious diction and scathing witticisms have been known to the general public since the 90s/2000s. Long-time companion of a director 30 years his junior, he blossomed in the media under the wing of Laurent Ruquier and Michel Drucker. He was their columnist in “Nothing to wax” on the radio or “We tried everything” and “Vivement Dimanche” on TV.
Also read Laurent Ruquier’s famous columnist, Gérard Miller, accused of sexual assault and rape under hypnosis
“In the audience”
In a Special Envoy investigation broadcast Thursday evening on France 2, collaborators from “We tried everything” assure that Gérard Miller “was shopping in the public” by approaching young women. At France Inter in the 90s, “We often criticized him for his way of spotting young girls in the audience and going to hook them up during breaks”wrote her columnist friend, feminist activist Isabelle Alonso, in early February on her blog. “He had a reputation for having a marked appetite for young women, but there were no sordid stories about him”says a journalist who worked with him within the Media and said he was “stunned” by the accusations.
Also read After accusations of sexual violence, an investigation opened against Gérard Miller
Lacan
The son of a doctor, from a family of Polish Jews, part of whom died in deportation, he is the younger brother of a renowned psychoanalyst, Jacques-Alain Miller. The latter is the son-in-law and executor of the French pope of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan.
Gerard Miller “has always been viewed negatively by the community: his media career is, for many psychoanalysts, completely unbearable”assures Elisabeth Roudinesco, historian of psychoanalysis. “He uses the discipline to interpret, comment on politics for example”she denounces.
Ms. Roudinesco won an appeal in 2014 for defamation brought against her by Judith Miller, daughter of Lacan and wife of Jacques-Alain Miller. The indictment of Gérard Miller for sexual violence is linked to that of the director Benoît Jacquot by the actress Judith Godrèche, who was the latter’s companion when she was only 14 years old. The first accusations against the psychologist arose after the re-emergence of a documentary that he had made in 2011 on Mr. Jacquot. The filmmaker then confided to him that “cinema was a kind of cover” for relationships with minors.
Gerard Miller