French filmmaker arrested for alleged sexual assault

PARIS (Reuters) – French film director Christophe Ruggia was taken into custody on Tuesday, Paris prosecutors said, on suspicion of sexually abusing a teenage girl who appeared in one of his films nearly two decades ago.

Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, a lawyer for Ruggia, said the filmmaker denies any wrongdoing.

Actress Adele Haenel, now 31, claims that Ruggia attacked and harassed her between 2001 and 2004 after she was cast in the film “Les Diables” (The Devils), which Ruggia directed.

According to Haenel’s allegations, published in French media outlet Mediapart in November last year, she was 12 years old when she was first bullied and the abuse continued until she was 15.

In November, the Paris public prosecutor’s office opened preliminary investigations into “sexual assault of a minor under the age of 15 by a person in authority and sexual harassment.”

Ruggia’s arrest came days after French prosecutors opened a separate investigation into allegations of child rape that sent shockwaves through French culture.

In a book published this month, Vanessa Springora, now 47, head of the French publishing house Julliard, claims that she was sexually abused at the age of 14 by the 83-year-old well-known author Gabriel Matzneff.

Matzneff said Springora falsely portrayed him as a pervert and abuser.

The #MeToo movement, which emerged in the wake of the scandal surrounding Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein, has sparked a wave of allegations from people claiming to have been sexually abused by people in positions of power.

However, the reaction in France has so far been relatively muted.

While many people in France support the movement, some prominent figures do not. Actress Catherine Deneuve signed a letter in 2018 along with 99 other French women calling the #MeToo campaign “puritanism” and declaring that men have the right to “harass” women.

(Reporting by Matthieu Protard, Sophie Louet and Simon Carraud; editing by Mike Collett-White)