French filmmaker Christophe Ruggia was arrested and taken into police custody in Paris for questioning on Tuesday morning as part of investigations prompted by actress Adèle Haenel’s interview with Mediapart last November, when she accused Ruggia of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching when she was aged between 12 and 15.
Haenel, now 31, was an unknown child actress when she was chosen by Christophe Ruggia to star in his 2002 film Les Diables (English title, The Devils). In her interview with Mediapart, she said Ruggia's alleged inappropriate sexual behaviour towards her took place between 2001 and 2004, when the director was then aged 36 to 39. She spoke of the mental “hold” that the film-maker had over her during the making of The Devils followed by “constant sexual harassment”, repeated “touching” of her thighs and body and “forced kisses on the neck” which she said took place in the director's apartment and in hotel rooms during several international film festivals.
Ruggia, a successful director of independent films, also known for his left-leaning political activism, firmly denied Haenel’s accusations.
Haenel and several other people previously interviewed by Mediapart in its investigation into her claims have already been questioned by police, whose enquiries are part of a preliminary investigation into alleged “sexual assault of a minor” and “sexual harassment” opened by the Paris public prosecution services in November.
In the investigation published by Mediapart in early November, Haenel described years of depression following her relationship with Ruggia, which she broke off and also decided to put an end to her hopes of a career in cinema. She recounted feeling a deep and indelible “shame” about what she says happened to her, turning into a cold “anger” which she said stayed with her for years. Finally, “little by little” she said she found peace because she had to “get through all that”.
The actress eventually returned to cinema, and has since become one of the most acclaimed actresses of her generation in France. She has won several “César” French film awards – the country’s equivalent to the US Oscars – and starred in 16 films screened at the Cannes film festival. After notable roles in Water Lilies (2007), House of Tolerance (2011), Suzanne (2014), and Love at First Fight (2015), she has more recently won international praise for Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by her former partner, Céline Sciamma.
In March 2019 the anger returned “in a more constructive way” when she saw the documentary Leaving Neverland on the late Michael Jackson in which damning witness accounts accused the singer of crimes of paedophilia and revealed the singer's mechanism for exerting control over others. “That made me change the perspective on what I'd gone through,” she told Mediapart, “because I had always made myself think that it had been a story of un-reciprocated love. I had always stuck to his fable about how 'it's not the same with us, the others couldn't understand'. And I also needed that time so that I was able to speak about things without making an absolute drama of it either. That's why [I'm doing this] now.”
She told Mediapart that she had to speak out because “keeping silent had become unbearable” and because “silence always plays in favour of the guilty”.
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Haenel was questioned by police on November 26th, three weeks after Mediapart’s investigation was published, when she also filed an official complaint against Ruggia for sexual harassment. She gave further statements to police on December 2nd. Mediapart understands that in all she has been questioned for about 22 hours.
Others questioned by police include Ruggia’s former personal partner Mona Achache, a film director who told Mediapart that he had confessed to her that he had had “romantic feelings” for Haenel, and how he inappropriately touched the actress was aged 13. Also questioned by police are members of Ruggia’s crew during the shooting of The Devils, including casting director Christel Baras, young actors’ coach Hélène Seretti, and continuity director Edmée Doroszlai.
Haenel and some of others questioned have handed over evidence in support of their statements, including letters, photos, videos, DVDs and their work documents recorded during the shooting of The Devils.
At a general assembly meeting on January 10th, members of the French filmmakers’ association, the SRF, voted to suspend Ruggia’s membership and post on its board pending the outcome of the current investigation. Ruggia, 55, who was SRF co-president until June last year, had requested the meeting after opposing a move by the association to expel him following the publication of Mediapart’s investigation and interview with Haenel.
During Mediapart’s investigation into Haenel’s claims (published in English here, in French here) Ruggia declined to be interviewed face-to-face, and chose to not answer in detail precise questions submitted to him in writing. Instead, through his lawyer, he “categorically” denied “having carried out any harassment or any form of [inappropriate] touching of this young girl who was then a minor”.
But three days after the publication of the investigation, he sent a lengthy written statement to Mediapart, in which he recognised the notion of a “hold” present in his relationship with the underage Haenel.
“I never had towards her, I repeat, physical gestures and a behaviour of sexual harassment which she accuses me of, but I made the mistake of playing Pygmalion, with the misunderstandings and impediments that such an attitude creates,” he wrote in the November 6th statement. “[It was] the hold of a film director towards an actress who he had directed and with whom he dreamed of filming again.”
“At the time, I did not see that my adulation and the hopes that I placed in her could have appeared to her, given her young age, as distressing at certain times. If that is the case, and if she can, I ask her to forgive me.”
Mediapart’s investigation was carried out between April and October last year, and involved interviews with more than 30 people. Several of them supported the claims of the actress, including film director and screenwriter Mona Achache. She told Mediapart of a conversation she had with Ruggia when she was his partner, in the spring of 2011. She said that Ruggia, speaking of the period during the 2002 promotional tour of The Devils, “told me that he had had romantic feelings for Adèle”. Achache, who has no personal links with Haenel, said she questioned Ruggia further, after which he detailed a precise incident. “He was watching a film with Adèle. She was lying down, her head on his knees,” Achache recalled him saying. “He had passed his hand up from Adèle’s tummy to her chest, under her T-shirt. He told me he saw a look of fear in her, staring wide-eyed, and that he too became frightened and withdrew his hand.”
There were also two letters written by Ruggia to Haenel in 2006 and 2007, in which he referred to his “love” which “was sometimes too heavy to bear”.
Among the 20 members of the crew involved in the shooting of The Devils who Mediapart contacted during the investigation, some said they had little or no recollection of the shoot, while others declined to be interviewed. There were also some who said they had noticed nothing untoward. However, many described a “hold” exerted by the director over Haenel, who was aged 12 at the time. Several of those questioned said they had tried in vain to raise an alarm, however discreet, over Ruggia’s relationship with Haenel both during, and in some cases after, the filming of The Devils.
Last November, Haenel told Mediapart that she did not want to file a complaint against Ruggia because “justice the justice system ignores us, we ignore the justice system”. In a live video interview with Mediapart (see the version with English subtitles here) she said: “I never thought of [turning to] the justice system because there is a systemic violence towards women by the legal system […] When one sees to what degree women are disparaged…In situations of sexual violence, it is one rape out of ten which ends up with a conviction [Editor’s note, in France it has been estimated that one alleged case in every 100 leads to a conviction]. What does that say about the nine others? What does it say about all those lives, in fact? The justice system must place itself in question in that regard.”
“There are so many women who are sent off to be crushed, either in the manner in which their complaint is received, or in the way in which their life will be dissected and the way they will be looked at,” Haenel added.
But after the police contacted her in November after the launch by the prosecution services of the preliminary investigation, Haenel said she had finally decided to “actively take part” in the legal case. “Now that the justice system has opened an investigation I’m not going to shy away, and I hope to do all that’s within my power to go through to the end of the legal process,” she told Mediapart. “What I’m waiting for from the justice system now, at a personal level, is accompaniment and atonement.”
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- The French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse