A Paris court on Tuesday found Gérard Depardieu guilty of sexual assault, giving him an 18-month suspended sentence.

Depardieu was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women, a production designer and an assistant director, on the set of Jean Becker’s French film The Green Shutters in 2021. The court also placed the French star of Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac on the national sex offender registry. Depardieu did not appear in court for the sentencing.

The ruling is the first successful case made against Depardieu, who faces at least 20 separate public accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior, going back decades. The ruling is being seen as a landmark in the #MeToo movement in France.

The set dresser, referred to only as Amélie in court, said the actor grabbed her with his legs and started groping her, saying he was going to take his “big parasol” and “shove it up your pussy.” The third assistant director, referred to as Sarah, described Depardieu grabbing her buttocks and breasts on two separate occasions on set.

Depardieu has repeatedly denied the charges against him, claiming that as an old man (he is 76) he was “not into groping” and that his actions had been misinterpreted. In one instance, the actor claimed, he had grabbed Amélie’s hips “to keep from slipping.”

During this trial, Depardieu had some prominent defenders, including actress Fanny Ardant (8 Women), who testified that she had “never witnessed an act that I would have found shocking” by Depardieu. But she acknowledged that “the world has changed, society has changed, the benchmarks are no longer the same, there are things that we tolerated and that are no longer tolerable.”

Depardieu could be back later this year to stand trial in a separate case, involving rape allegations made by actress Charlotte Arnould, dating back to 2018.