A French court has today (February 3) found French filmmaker Christophe Ruggia guilty of sexually assaulting actress Adèle Haenel when she was a minor.
He has been sentenced to four years in prison, including two years under house arrest with an electronic bracelet and two years suspended.
The trial was the first to go to court of the major #MeToo cases in the French film industry. Ruggia was accused of sexually assaulting Haenel starting when she was just 12 years old in the early 2000s after she was cast in his 2002 film The Devils.
The court also ordered the director to pay Haenel a total of €35,000 in damages and therapy expenses. Ruggia’s lawyer said he would appeal.
Ruggia, now 59, has denied any wrongdoing since the accusations emerged and through the trial. During the much-publicised December trial, Haenel stormed out of the courtroom on the second day of proceedings yelling “Shut your mouth!” when the filmmaker claimed he had acted to protect her.
Haenel, whose credits including Celine Sciamma’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, announced she was quitting the French film industry in 2023, citing its complacency concerning sexual predators. In 2020, she marched out of the Cesar awards ceremony in protest against a best director prize for Roman Polanski.
Her initial accusations about Ruggia in 2019 prompted several other allegations that have rocked the French film sector in recent years. Actor Gerard Depardieu is set to stand trial in March for accusations of sexually assaulting two women that he has denied.
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