In a highly publicized case, Luc Besson, 63, quickly challenged the charges against him. While he had been placed under the less incriminating status of assisted witness, rather than an indictment on January 25, 2021, after a long hearing, the case is experiencing a new turn, this Tuesday, May 24 2022. The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed today the dismissal order in favor of the producer, accused in an emblematic case of the #MeToo era of rape since May 2018 by actress Sand Van Roy. The lawyer for the latter announced an appeal.
“The court upheld my client’s innocence. A dozen procedural initiatives by Ms. Van Roy all ended in the same way. Luc Besson regrets these four lost years“said his lawyer, Me Thierry Marembert, as reported by AFP. Me Antoine Gitton, the actress’ lawyer with Me Francis Szpiner, said: “We are filing an immediate appeal.” According to him, this “sordid news item” turned into “state matter“, and was therefore treated as such.”I saw no justice there, only a sham justice of petty virtue. We promise to teach this little justice a lesson in virtue“, he launched.
It was on May 18, 2018 that Sand Van Roy filed a complaint for rape, a few hours after having had an appointment in a Parisian palace with the director. They then gave two very different versions of this moment. According to the actress ‘after Sand Van Roy, there was an imposed digital anal penetration then a fainting, in spite of her injunctions to stop. For Luc Besson, a consented vaginal intercourse imbued with “candy“. Two months later, she had denounced other rapes and sexual assaults, committed according to her during two years of a “professional relationship“with the man behind the creation of the Cité du Cinéma in the north of Paris. Complaints dismissed in February 2019 by the Paris prosecutor’s office, which considered that it had not been possible”characterize the reported offense“.
The regrets of Luc Besson
The actress and the filmmaker had been confronted once, in December 2018, within the premises of the judicial police. “We could barely ask questions, we could not ask about my intimate wounds, and no difficult questions were asked of Mr. Besson“, had regretted Sand Van Roy to AFP. The actress of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, had then filed a complaint with civil action and obtained the opening of a judicial investigation in October 2019 for “rapes“. For his part, the illustrious director made it known, in October 2019, during an interview, that he “(regretted) having had a relationship with this young girl when in fact there is a relationship of subordination“.