The dismissal in favor of Luc Besson, accused of rape, before the Court of Appeal

Europe 1 with AFP 3:29 p.m., April 18, 2022, modified at 3:31 p.m., April 18, 2022

The Paris Court of Appeal is studying on Tuesday morning the appeal of actress Sand Van Roy against a dismissal order from which the filmmaker Luc Besson benefited in December, whom she has accused of rape since May 2018. In this emblematic file of the #MeToo era, a Parisian investigating judge had followed the requisitions of the Paris prosecutor's office and pronounced on December 9 the abandonment of the proceedings against the famous director and producer.

Luc Besson disputes the accusations

According to a source familiar with the matter, the general prosecutor's office requested confirmation of the dismissal order.

In this highly publicized case, Luc Besson, 63, disputes the charges against him.

He was not indicted but only placed under the less incriminating status of assisted witness on January 25, 2021, after a long hearing.

"We are approaching this hearing with serenity. The public prosecutor's office has requested confirmation of the dismissal, as before him the Paris public prosecutor's office and the investigating judge", declared to AFP Me Thierry Marembert, lawyer for the filmmaker.

"The file sufficiently establishes that Ms. Sand Van Roy consented to the relationship she had with Mr. Besson".

The plaintiff contests, for a long time and point by point, the procedure carried out by French justice, which she considers biased and incomplete and which "destroyed" her life.

The case started with the rape complaint filed on May 18, 2018 by the actress against the influential French producer and director after an appointment with him in a Parisian palace.

No confrontation organized during the investigation

Two months later, she had denounced other rapes and sexual assaults, committed according to her during two years of a "relationship of professional influence" with the one who is at the origin of the creation of the Cité du Cinéma. in the north of Paris.

His complaints had been dismissed in February 2019 by the Paris prosecutor's office, which considered that it had not been able to "characterize the offense denounced".

The filmmaker and the actress had been confronted once, in December 2018, in the premises of the judicial police, during the preliminary investigation.

"We could barely ask questions, we couldn't ask questions about my intimate wounds, and no difficult questions were asked of Mr. Besson," Sand Van Roy criticized AFP.

The actress, who appears in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" directed by Luc Besson, then filed a complaint with civil action and obtained the opening of a judicial investigation in October 2019 for "rape".

During the investigation, no confrontation was organised.

In October 2019, Mr. Besson had indicated in an interview that he "(regrets) having had a relationship with this young girl when in fact there is a relationship of subordination".