The Paris Court of Appeal on Tuesday confirmed the dismissal order in favor of producer Luc Besson, accused of rape by actress Sand Van Roy since May 2018 in an emblematic case of the #MeToo era.
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“The court confirmed the innocence of my client”, welcomed the filmmaker's lawyer, Me Thierry Marembert.
One of the Belgian-Dutch actress's lawyers, Me Antoine Gitton, denounced a "simulacrum of justice" and announced an "appeal in cassation" against this decision of the investigating chamber.
Four years of proceedings
On May 18, 2018, the actress filed a complaint for rape, a few hours after an appointment in a Parisian palace.
The two protagonists have two versions of the events: according to Sand Van Roy, an imposed anal penetration which led to her fainting, despite her injunctions to stop.
For Luc Besson, a consented vaginal report imbued with
“gentleness”
.
Two months later, the actress filed a complaint for other rapes and sexual assaults committed between 2016 and 2018 in Paris and London, episodes of a
"relationship of professional influence"
under threats of
"retaliation on her career as a actress"
with the man behind the creation of the Cité du Cinéma, north of Paris.
During the preliminary investigation, the filmmaker and the actress were confronted once, in December 2018, before the closing of the investigation, in February 2019, by the Paris prosecutor's office, which considered that it had not been able to
"characterize the reported offence”
.
The actress, who appears in
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
by Luc Besson, then filed a complaint with a civil action and obtained, despite a refusal from the Paris prosecutor's office, referral to an examining magistrate in October. 2019. Two years later, on December 9, an instructing magistrate issued a dismissal order
"in the absence of any material element to support the statements"
of the 34-year-old complainant.
A vision rejected by Sand Van Roy who filed a complaint against the judge for
“false”
and radically contests the content of the judicial information, according to her biased and incomplete.