A film director has been found guilty of sexually abusing a 12-year-old actor while working on a movie, in one of the first #MeToo-related verdicts in French cinema.
Christophe Ruggia was accused by actor Adele Haenel of repeatedly touching her inappropriately while working on the movie The Devils in 2001, when he was 36. He was sentenced to four years by the French court but will avoid jail, having been issued a two-year suspended term and two years with an electronic ankle bracelet. Ruggia maintains his innocence and will appeal the verdict, his lawyer Fanny Colin told reporters on Monday.
Haenel first publicly accused him of sexual assault in 2019, saying he exercised undue control over her and isolated her from her family and crew members.
Several French film stars were in the courtroom to listen to the verdict, including Judith Godrèche, a figurehead of France’s #MeToo movement, and Céline Sciamma, the director of Portrait of a Lady On Fire and Haenel’s ex-partner.
Haenel accused Ruggia of abusing her from the age of 12 to 15, both during and after filming of The Devils. She often went to Ruggia’s house, where he would touch her between the legs and caress her chest, she told investigators.
Ruggia “took advantage of the dominant position” he had over Haenel at the time, the court said in a statement. “During quasi-weekly meetings at your home for over three years you had sexualized gestures and attitudes,” he was told, as Haenel was “gradually isolated” from her loved ones.
Appearing relieved and breathing heavily as the verdict was announced, Haenel was applauded by supporters as she left the court, the Associated Press reported.
Now 35, the award-winning actor and star of Portrait of a Lady On Fire, has become one of the leading figures of France’s #MeToo movement after first revealing Ruggia’s abuse in 2019.
She said Ruggia’s actions affected her school work and provoked suicidal thoughts. “Christophe told me that he was in love with me and that the age difference was a curse for him and that unfortunately, I was an adult in a child’s body,” she told police.
Haenel described Ruggia’s conduct during the filming of The Devils as “permanent sexual harassment”, which included “touching [on the] thighs and torso” and “forced kisses on the neck”.
Ruggia denied the accusations in a statement via his lawyers to Mediapart, which first published the accusations from Haenel. The 2019 statement said he “categorically refutes” any misconduct, adding that the pair had a “professional and affectionate relationship”.
Haenel retired from the film industry in 2023, citing “complacency” over men who were accused of being sexual predators, including Gérard Depardieu, Roman Polanski and Dominique Boutonnat.
In a scathing open letter, Haenel accused Cannes and other pillars of the French film industry of being "ready to do anything to defend their rapist chiefs”.
It came following a May 2022 interview, in which Haenel accused the film industry of defending a “capitalist, patriarchal, racist, sexist world of structural inequality”.
Depardieu, one of France’s most famous actors, goes on trial in March accused of sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021. Depardieu also denies the accusations.
Prosecutors initially requested a five-year sentence including a three-year suspended prison sentence and two years of wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.
