The Court of Cassation, the highest court of the French judiciary, will announce its decision on Wednesday on Belgian-Dutch actress Sand Van Roy’s rape allegations against director Luc Besson.
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On May 18, 2018, the 35-year-old actress filed a rape complaint a few hours after an appointment at a Parisian palace; The protagonists gave two versions.
For Sand Van Roy, the influential filmmaker had forced digital penetration on him, a source of impotence despite his interim orders to stop. A version, in their opinion, confirmed by evidence, on the day of facts, by medical-judicial emergencies.
Two months later, the actress filed a lawsuit against the filmmaker for additional rapes and sexual assaults, which she says were committed in episodes of “professional influence influence,” between 2016 and 2018, under threat of “retaliation against his acting career.”
Luc Besson regretted an extramarital relationship in the context of “subordination” while the actress had acted in some of her films. But he twice implied he had “no recollection” of some of the facts denounced, and reported an approved report steeped in “candy”.
The judicial inquiry was the subject of an initial dismissal in December 2021, upheld by the Paris Court of Appeal in May 2022.
The actress’s defense had therefore appealed to the Court of Cassation, arguing that the Court of Appeal’s judgment was vitiated by procedural irregularities and “distorted” certain elements of the file.
The 64-year-old director and producer, known for ‘The Big Blue’, ‘The Fifth Element’, ‘Léon’ and ‘Lucy’, is one of the French characters hit by the wave of allegations by women who claim Being a victim of rape or sexual assault. after the fall of American producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017.
The actress has also filed a rape complaint against Mr Besson in Belgium. The Belgian Constitutional Court is scheduled to decide on the admissibility of this complaint at the end of 2023.