The Paris Court of Appeal postponed until January 23 the continuation of the appeal trial of filmmaker Christophe Ruggia, Friday December 19, tried for sexual assault on actress Adèle Haenel between the ages of 12 and 14. At 8 p.m., the court had only had time to question the 60-year-old director, even though the case was only heard over one afternoon. Adèle Haenel did not have the opportunity to be called to the stand.
During a five-hour interrogation, the filmmaker insisted, as since the first day, that he was not “not a sexual assaulter, not a rapist, not a pedophile or anything like that”. “If I had done what she accused me of doing, putting my hand down her pants even once, I would never have been able to look in the mirror and I would have stopped seeing her immediately. This never happened”he was indignant in court.
The hearing took place a year after an electric trial in this emblematic case of #MeToo in French cinema. Sentenced at first instance four years in prison, two of which must be spent under an electronic bracelet, the director was once again confronted in the courtroom with the 36-year-old double Caesarized actress, who has since turned her back on cinema to devote herself to theater and activism.
The scandal broke six years ago, in November 2019, when in an investigation by Mediapart Adèle Haenel accuses Christophe Ruggia of sexual assault from 2001 to 2004, in the wake of the grueling filming of the art-house film The Devilswhere the director offered him his first film role.
Constantly, from her first public speech to the trial in December 2024, Adèle Haenel describes repeated and non-consensual caresses on the part of Christophe Ruggia on her schoolgirl body during meetings at his home, on Saturday afternoons for more than two years.
“And I tense up, my body tenses, I curl up in a corner of the sofa”the actress testified at the bar, angrily, in first instance. According to his statements during the investigation, Christophe Ruggia threatened to return “into nothingness” if she rejected him, “to this worthless thing” that she was before he allowed her her first appearance on the big screen. “I have over 5,000 DVDs at home, lots of books (…). We talk about books, films, travel, his school, my projects”argued Mr. Ruggia during the appeal trial.
“We had to launch a #MeToo in France and it fell on me,” defended Christophe Ruggia
If he concedes a “authentic suffering” from the actress now aged 36, the director attributes his accusations to a « reconstruction » posterior mentality on his part. According to him, Adèle Haenel, who at the time had difficulty landing another role after The Devilswould have been angry with him for not being able to film in the next film he was preparing. “There is a reconstruction in Adèle’s memories that goes as far as something like ‘Yeah, actually, he wanted to sleep with me.’ »
At first instance, the director had denounced a “pure lie » and categorically denied the facts since their revelation. Before the criminal court, he claimed not to have ” Never “ summer “sexually attracted” by the child who, according to him, gave off a “overflowing sensuality”. “We had to launch a #MeToo in France and it fell on me”regretted the filmmaker who was preparing a new film with teenagers at the time of the publication of the article Mediapart.
In its judgment condemning, moreover, Christophe Ruggia to compensate Adèle Haenel to the tune of 15,000 euros for her moral damage and 20,000 for her years of psychological follow-up, the Paris court estimated that the defendant had taken advantage of his « ascendance » about the beginning actress, “consequence of the relationship established” during the filming of the film The Devils.
During weekly meetings at his home, Christophe Ruggia “continued to exercise his authority as director, [l’adolescente] was not able to oppose or escape from this hold”estimated the judges.
In a letter published by Telerama in 2023, she justified her departure from cinema “to denounce the general complacency of the profession towards sexual attackers, and more generally, the way in which this environment collaborates with the deadly racist ecocidal order of the world as it is”.