PARIS | An investigating judge from the Paris judicial court dismissed the filmmaker Luc Besson, accused of rape for three years by actress Sand Van Roy, we learned Thursday from sources familiar with the case.
The magistrate followed the requisitions of the Paris prosecutor’s office, which had demanded in early October the abandonment of the proceedings in this highly media affair.
The 62-year-old filmmaker, who has always disputed the facts, had not been indicted, but only placed under the less incriminating status of assisted witness.
The case started with the rape complaint, filed on May 18, 2018 by the actress against the influential French producer and director, after a meeting with him in a Parisian palace.
Two months later, she had denounced other rapes and sexual assaults, committed according to her during two years of a “professional relationship” with Mr. Besson.
These complaints were dismissed in February 2019 by the Paris prosecutor’s office, who felt they could not “characterize the offense denounced”.
The actress, who appears in Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets directed by Luc Besson, had then filed a complaint with the constitution of civil party and obtained the automatic opening of a judicial investigation in October 2019 for “rapes”.
After the denunciations of the actress, eight other women had testified to the online investigative newspaper Mediapart of inappropriate gestures, even of sexual assault on the part of the director of the film. Big Blue, Nikita Where The fifth Element. The facts were largely time-barred.
“I have never physically or morally forced a woman to anything”, had swept Luc Besson in 2019.
“After a procedure which lasted three and a half years (…) the investigating judge has just dismissed his dismissal which finally clears Luc Besson of the accusations which he defends himself from the start”, welcomed his lawyer , Me Thierry Marembert.
The complainant has long contested and point by point the procedure conducted by the French justice, considering it biased and her life “destroyed”.
“I regret having lodged a complaint, this country does not protect the victims of famous people,” the Belgian-Dutch actress said in a documentary broadcast in mid-November on the French public channel France 2.
Thursday, she announced on Twitter a “complaint for forgery” against the magistrate.