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Europe|French Court Convicts Film Director in Big #MeToo Case
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/world/europe/france-metoo-ruggia.html
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Christophe Ruggia was accused of sexually assaulting the actress Adèle Haenel when she was a minor.
Feb. 3, 2025Updated 8:31 a.m. ET
A French court convicted the director Christophe Ruggia on Monday of sexually assaulting the actress Adèle Haenel when she was a minor, handing him a four-year sentence — two years under house arrest and the rest suspended.
It was the first major case to examine an accusation of sexual misconduct in French cinema since the #MeToo movement, which emerged in 2017 and was met with a severe backlash in France.
Mr. Ruggia stood at attention as the judges explained the guilty verdict.
“You took advantage of the influence you had on the young actress Adèle Haenel,” the head judge, Gilles Fonrouge, said.
Ms. Haenel did not show any clear emotion when the verdict — which also ordered Mr. Ruggia to pay 50,000 euros, or about $51,300, in damages — was read out. When she left the Paris courthouse, women gathered outside applauded. A lawyer for Mr. Ruggia said that his client planned to appeal.
Mr. Ruggia cast Ms. Haenel in his 2002 film “The Devils,” about a relationship bordering on incest, when she was 12 and he was 36. After the filming finished, she continued to visit him regularly on Saturdays over three years at his apartment, where, she says, he touched her inappropriately and sexually harassed her.
When Ms. Haenel first revealed such accusations publicly in 2019, she was the first major French actress to speak out about her personal story of abuse since the #MeToo movement emerged. She was a rising star, praised for fierce yet sensitive performances that had earned her two Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscars.
