• French Movie Director Bags 4-year Imprisonment For Sexually Assaulting Child Actress – Independent Newspaper Nigeria

    French movie director bags 4-year imprisonment for sexually assaulting child actress independent newspaper nigeria - nigeria newspapers online
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    A 60year-old film director, Christophe Ruggia,was found guilty of sexually assaulting Haenel when she was underage and was sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended. He will also be required to wear an electronic bracelet and be under house arrest for two years.

    The court president said that French film director, Ruggia had “taken advantage” of his influence over actress Adèle Haenel, who was between the ages of 12 and 15 at the time of the assaults..

    In addition to the sentence, Ruggia must pay €15,000 (£12,500) in compensation to Haenel, as well as €20,000 for the years of psychological therapy she received as a result of the abuse.
    According to reporters in court on Monday, she seemed anxious before to the conviction but remained silent as Ruggia’s sentence was announced.

    Ruggia disputed Haenel’s claims that he began harassing her when she was 12 years old while filming Les Diables (The Devils), his 2002 movie. There are sex scenes with the children in the movie, which tells the incestuous story of a boy and his autistic sister.

    There are also close-ups of Haenel’s nude body. Investigators had met with members of the film’s crew before to the trial, and many expressed their discomfort with Ruggia’s actions on set.

    A summary of the charges quoted by French media said Ruggia and Haenel continued to see each other every Saturday after the shooting of the film wrapped up, “under the guise of film lessons” during which Ruggia would touch her sexually and put his hands in her underwear.

    In interviews with French media, Haenel also claimed that Ruggia had exploited and dominated her as a child and that no one had guarded her against being “asked to do things in the name of art.”

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    In court last year, Ruggia refuted the charges, saying he had just attempted to “protect” Haenel in the early years of her notoriety. Ruggia scribbled notes about 12-year-old Haenel’s “overflowing sensuality” on his computer, according to investigators.

    Ruggia claimed that Haenel had been “radicalized” and that he believed he was a catalyst for the #MeToo movement in France.

    His remarks ultimately caused Haenel to yell at him to “shut up” before leaving the trial in the middle of last December. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a critically acclaimed movie from 2019, featured Haenel.

    In the same year, she described the “sexual harassment” she experienced at Ruggia’s hands in a long and tearful interview with the French publication Mediapart.

    She claimed that after seeing the documentary “Leaving Neverland,” which examined the musician Michael Jackson’s ties with minors, she made the decision to come forward about her alleged abuse.

    “It made me see I had clung for too long to the version of Ruggia, that it had all been a story of love,” she said, adding that it made her understand the mechanisms of “control and fascination”.

    Haenel quit the French film industry in 2023 in protest at what she called its “complacency” towards sexual predators.

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