A French court ordered a filmmaker to use an electric bracelet for two years on Monday, sparing him prison time in one of the crucial investigations of France’s# Metoo activity. The jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting an artist when she was a kid.
Adele Haenel, 35, accused filmmaker Christophe Ruggia, 60, of assaulting her in the early 2000s when she was between 12 and 14 and he was in his late 30s, accusations he has called “pure lies”.
” The court finds you guilty”, the presiding judge told the filmmaker.
You abused your position of authority over the young actress, you claim.
Haenel, who had arrived early in court and paced nervously in and around the room before the decision, did not make a statement but appeared relieved.
She left the courtroom to a swarm of ovations and cheers.
Before quitting the movie industry, Haenel, who starred in the 2019 drama” Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” made the first significant claim against the French film industry.
In the 2002 film” The Devils,” the story of an incestuous relationship between a boy and his autistic sister, Ruggia directed Haenel. It was her first film role.
The film contains sex scenes between the children and close-ups of Haenel’s naked body.
Before the trial, witnesses testified that members of the film crew had informed them of Ruggia’s “unease” with the movie set’s behavior.
Between 2001 and 2004, after shooting the film, the teenager went to see Ruggia nearly every Saturday.
She has accused him of caring for her thighs and touching her genitalia and breasts during these visits.
‘Injustice’
Ruggia received a four-year prison sentence from the Paris court, two of which were suspended and two of which were served with the bracelet rather than jail.
It ordered him to pay Haenel 15, 000 euros ($ 15, 400 ) in damages, as well as 20, 000 euros ($ 20, 500 ) for the years of psychological therapy she had to follow as a result of the abuse.
One of Ruggia’s lawyers said the filmmaker would be filing an appeal.
” Because we cannot accept this injustice, Christophe Ruggia is as we speak on his way… to appeal the ruling”, lawyer Fanny Collin told journalists.
Haenel claimed during the two days of hearings in December that she had no idea how to shake the director’s grip when he told her that she owed him her career.
” Who was there to say: ‘ It’s not your fault. It’s grooming. It’s violence'”? she said at the trial.
” You can’t abuse children like that”, she said.
After he claimed he had in fact sought to protect Haenel from mockery in school over the sex scenes in” The Devils,” he at one point told Ruggia to” shut up” and stormed out of the courtroom.
Ruggia claimed to have never been drawn to Haenel, accusing her of trying to slay him for not giving her any acting opportunities.
Award ceremony protest
In 2019, Haenel went public with the charges of the assaults, stunning the French film industry, which had been slower than Hollywood to react to the# MeToo movement.
In protest of a prize being awarded to veteran director Roman Polanski, who is wanted in the United States for statutory rape, Haenel stormed out of the industry’s Cesars award ceremony in 2020.
She quit the movie industry in 2023, complaining that the French film industry was ignoring sexual abuse.
France has been shook by a number of other allegations over the past few years.
Veteran film star Gerard Depardieu, 76, is to stand trial in March accused of sexually assaulting two women. He denies the accusations.
Actor Judith Godreche, 52, said last year two French directors, Benoit Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, had both sexually abused her when she was a teenager. Both deny the charges.
Since breaking her silence, Godreche has become a prominent voice in France’s# MeToo movement, prompting parliament to create an oversight body to investigate gender-based violence in the cultural sectors.
However, because her accusations were filed too late, according to the statute of limitations, she is unlikely to face charges against Jacquot and Doillon in court.
But Godreche attended Monday’s verdict against Ruggia.
” Justice has been done. It was very moving for me”, she said. However, “more needs to be done to put an end to violence against women.”
