2023-06-26 15:40:00
Final point in France in one of the most emblematic cases of #MeToo: the Court of Cassation definitively dismissed on Wednesday the accusations of rape formulated in 2018 once morest the filmmaker Luc Besson by the actress Sand Van Roy, who will take legal action European.
In its decision of which AFP was aware, the highest judicial court pronounced the non-admissibility of the appeal, for lack of legal “means”.
This decision “therefore puts a definitive end to this procedure initiated in 2018, during which Luc Besson was systematically cleared”welcomed Me Thierry Marembert, lawyer for the filmmaker who had received the support of Me Patrice Spinosi in cassation.
“I welcome this exemplary procedure, which has allowed the manifestation of the truth which is that Luc Besson is innocent”he added.
The complainant, Sand Van Roy, immediately reacted on Twitter: “Once once more, (…) the French justice refuses to look into the evidence of the file”.
“I continue the proceedings in progress and I will seize the European Court of Human Rights”, she added.
The 35-year-old Belgian-Dutch actress filed a complaint for rape on May 18, 2018, a few hours following an appointment in a Parisian palace, the protagonists of which gave two different versions.
For Sand Van Roy, the influential filmmaker had imposed on him digital penetration, a source of fainting, despite his injunctions to stop. A version according to her accredited by findings, the day of the facts, by the medico-judicial emergencies.
Two months following her initial complaint, the actress filed a complaint once morest the filmmaker for other rapes and sexual assaults committed, according to her, between 2016 and 2018, episodes of a “professional relationship” under threat of “retaliation for her acting career”.
Luc Besson for his part regretted an extra-marital relationship in a context of “subordination”while the actress had shot in some of her films.
But he indicated twice that he had no “not the memory” part of the facts denounced and recounted a consented report imbued with “candy”.
“Inequitable”
This decision is in line with the constant positioning of justice in this case: these charges had been dismissed in December 2021, confirmed by the Paris Court of Appeal in May 2022.
The magistrates of the Court of Appeal had swept away the testimonies of three women obtained during the investigation and disputed by Mr. Besson, who evoked “kiss on the neck” up to one “attempted rape” under possible threat of professional retaliation.
Other women had also testified to Mediapart regarding inappropriate gestures or sexual assaults, often prescribed, on the part of the director.
In its appeal, the actress’s defense considered that the judgment was tainted with procedural irregularities, would have “distorted” certain elements of the file, and would also and above all have endorsed a procedure “inequitable” since its origin.
During a hearing on May 24, the public rapporteur and the general counsel had proposed the non-admissibility of the appeal, considering that the defense called into question “sovereign appreciation” of the Court of Appeal, that his arguments were not serious and that the Court of Cassation did not have the right to rule on the need for an additional investigation.
The 64-year-old director and producer, known for “The Big Blue”, the “Fifth Element”, “Léon” or “Lucy”, was one of the main French figures caught in the wave of accusations from women who claim having been victims of rape or sexual assault in the wake of the fall of American producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017.
In addition to the appeal to the ECHR to come, Sand Van Roy has opened another front by filing a complaint for rape in Belgium once morest Mr. Besson.
The Belgian Constitutional Court should rule at the end of 2023 on the admissibility of this complaint.
According to the actress’s lawyer, Me Antoine Gitton, Belgian justice said in an October decision “that there are enough inculpatory clues to justify a substantive debate” in court, and “French justice has not at all sought the truth effectively”.
sa client “continue the fight very calmly, especially in Belgium”according to him.
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