‘You are a big liar’: France’s first major #MeToo case goes to trial

Paris: She accused him of isolating her during rehearsals and filming. Of grooming her for three years, when on Saturday afternoons he would touch her sexually. She said when it began he was 36. She was 12.

Five years ago, French actor Adele Haenel shocked the country’s film industry when she spoke out about director Christophe Ruggia, who cast her as the lead actor in a 2002 film about an incestuous relationship.

Adele Haenel in Chatham, New York in 2023, the year she published a letter explaining her decision to leave the film industry.Credit: New York Times

On Monday, the case went to court, marking the first major #MeToo accusations in France to proceed to trial. Ruggia, 59, is charged with aggravated sexual assault against a minor. If found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison as well as a fine of up to €150,000 (about $246,000).

Ruggia has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying that his relationship with Haenel was strictly platonic. Testifying in Paris Courthouse on Monday, Ruggia characterised the accusations that he had touched her sexually as “pure lies”.

Throughout Ruggia’s testimony, Haenel, 35, seemed tormented, her hands agitated, her teeth grinding, her face wracked by tics.

When it was her turn to testify, she described how she had dissolved into self-loathing and depression after years of feeling trapped in a relationship with Ruggia, in which he repeatedly touched her sexually. He frequently professed his love for her, she said, and would tell her that no one could understand it because she was a child.

Adele Haenel (left) and Noemie Merlant in the 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

“He acted like he was the victim of this story, and it was my fault,” she said before turning to him and saying, “I am looking at you, Mr Ruggia: You are a big liar.”

After Haenel first told her story to French investigative outlet Mediapart in 2019, it inspired heated conversations about the country’s film industry and sex with minors, and how the French justice system treats sexual abuse complaints.

At the time, Haenel was a rising star, praised for fierce yet sensitive performances that had earned her two Cesars, the French equivalent of the Oscars. In the United States, she rose to fame with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, her final role before she announced her decision to boycott the industry.

Ruggia was a relatively unknown director before the allegations. But in the insular world of French cinema he had a reputation for making films about social justice and for defending migrants and human rights. He spoke up on behalf of workers in the industry, leading him to take on a prominent role in the French directors’ association.

Protesters hold signs saying “Adele, we believe you” at a rally supporting Adele Haenel outside Paris Courthouse on Monday.Credit: AP

Haenel said she decided to speak about what happened to her after watching a 2019 documentary about pop star Michael Jackson’s relationship with two young boys and learning that Ruggia was working on a film with two teenage actors at the time.

“It’s a responsibility for me,” she said in a Mediapart video interview that year. “I work. I have projects going on. I am comfortable, materially. I am not in the same precarious situation as most of the people this happens to.”

Still, she had gone 15 years without speaking publicly about the alleged abuse and had never gone to the police. That was because, she explained in the video, she felt there was “systemic violence against women in the justice system”.

“Justice ignores us,” she said, “we ignore justice.”

Adele Haenel in Chatham, New York last year. She gave evidence to a Paris court this week.Credit: New York Times

Days after the article was published, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case. Haenel decided to participate in the process. It became a four-year investigation.

In a letter sent to Mediapart, Ruggia denied the allegations but said he understood the powerful influence he might have had on Haenel as the director who first discovered her talent.

“At the time, I did not see that my adulation and the hopes I placed in her could have appeared to her, given her young age, as painful at certain moments,” he wrote. “If this is the case and if she can, I ask her to forgive me.”

Haenel’s decision to speak publicly sparked discussions, but it did not result in political or structural changes in the French film industry. While #MeToo quickly toppled several powerful men in Hollywood after the movement began in 2017, in France there was strong resistance. “Many artists blurred, or wanted to blur, the distinction between sexual behaviour and abuse,” Haenel said in a 2020 interview with The New York Times.

Just a few months after Haenel spoke out, director Roman Polanski was given the most prestigious award – best director – at the annual Cesar ceremony. Polanski was convicted in 1978 of having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in the United States.

Haenel, who was nominated for best actress, staged an unplanned protest at the ceremony, standing up in her navy gown, turning her back to the stage, making a zero with her fingers and shouting “Shame!” before leaving the theatre.

In a letter published in a French culture magazine in 2023, Haenel explained her decision to leave cinema, an industry she said protected sexual abusers and would rather victims “disappear and die in silence”.

“I am cancelling you from my world,” she wrote.

Genevieve Sellier, an emeritus professor of cinema studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University and the author of The Cult of the Auteur, said: “The reception in France to Adele Haenel’s declarations in 2019, in reality, testifies to the resistance in the industry.

“She was alone. She was followed by almost no one. In the end, the price she paid was extremely heavy because she no longer works in cinema.”

The #MeToo movement in France’s movie business was rekindled last year when actor Judith Godreche accused two directors of sexually abusing her when she was a child actor.

Her public announcements came shortly after a television investigation into France’s most decorated actor, Gerard Depardieu, who has faced and denied several accusations of sexual misconduct. The documentary included footage of him making crude and sexist comments about a prepubescent girl during a 2018 trip to North Korea, which caused another shockwave in France.

A couple of months later, two women filed a lawsuit against Depardieu accusing him of sexual assault during the shooting of a film in 2021, which he has denied. He was due to appear in court last month, but his lawyer said he was too ill to attend. His trial has been postponed to March.

Haenel in Paris in 2020. In an interview that year, she said France had “completely missed the boat” on the #MeToo movement.Credit: New York Times

At Godreche’s prompting, the French lower house of parliament launched a committee to examine sexual violence in the film and other artistic industries in France.

Perhaps because of Haenel’s public criticism of the justice system in France, the police investigation into her case has been extremely rigorous and detailed. The overview of the case by the investigative judge is 35 pages.

The investigating judge interviewed 26 people, including 11 members of the cast and crew of The Devils, Ruggia’s 2002 film in which Haenel plays an autistic child in an incestuous relationship with her brother. Several crew members said the director had an “intense”, “ambiguous” and “unhealthy” relationship with the actor, isolating her from others. Some reported seeing him kiss her on the face and cheeks.

Others, such as Haenel’s co-star Vincent Rottiers, said they had not seen any inappropriate behaviour from Ruggia. The film’s producer and one of its editors also said they saw nothing out of the ordinary.

After the film was shot, Haenel regularly visited the director’s apartment to watch films, so he could teach her the classics, she said. She told police that while there, he caressed her thighs, working his way up to her genitals, kissed her on the neck and put his hand under her T-shirt to stroke her breasts and her belly.

“Christophe was telling me that he was in love with me and that the age difference was a curse to him and that unfortunately I was an adult in the body of a child,” she told police.

Haenel said that she refused to see Ruggia after 2004, and police have collected two letters that he sent to her years later. In them, he wrote that his heart was “exploding in his chest” after he saw her on the street one day, that his longing for her was like a “wound” and that his love for her had “always been sincere”.

After the Mediapart investigation, Ruggia’s new film involving the teenage actors, The Emergence of Butterflies, was put on hold, and he was ejected from the French directors’ association. He told police that other projects he had in the works had also been put on hold because of the investigation and that he had lost his job at a prestigious theatre school. He is living on welfare in Brittany, close to his parents’ home, he said.

The trial is scheduled to last about two days.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.

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