After nine months of investigation, the Paris prosecutor’s office has dismissed Monday the complaint of a Belgian-Dutch actress accusing of raping the influential French producer and director Luc Besson, one of the personalities implicated by the wave #metoo.
“Mr. Luc Besson noted with satisfaction the decision of the prosecutor to take no further accusations by M me Sand Van Roy, he always formally denied, “said his lawyer Thierry Marembert in a statement to the AFP.
The Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP that the investigations “failed to characterize the offense denounced in all its constituent elements”. He therefore does not conclude that there is no infringement but considers that there is not enough evidence to continue the procedure.
Counsel for the Belgian-Dutch actress and model aged 30, M e Francis Szpiner, told AFP its intention to file a complaint with civil party to obtain the resumption of investigations by a judge ‘instruction.
“There are indisputable evidence, including medical certificates,” said the lawyer.
On May 18, 2018, Sand Van Roy had filed a complaint against the producer of Valérian and the City of a thousand planets , the day after a meeting in a Parisian palace, the Bristol.
Opening of another investigation
The actress told the investigators that she had an intimate relationship with the 59-year-old filmmaker for about two years and felt compelled to do so given their professional connections, according to a source close to the investigation and the complainant’s testimony in the media.
In July, the woman had filed a second complaint for rape on facts committed previously over a period of about two years, according to a source familiar with the matter. In total, she denounced four rapes.
Nine other women had subsequently accused the director of the Grand Bleu of inappropriate acts, or even sexual assault, during testimony collected by the French news site Mediapart for largely prescribed facts.
Hearing in free hearing on 2 October by the police, Luc Besson was then confronted in December to his accuser, each remaining on his positions.
“I’m amazed that it took four months to hear an alleged perpetrator, who is more free hearing and not in custody” for such serious facts, denounced M e Szpiner.
The prosecution also said it opened another investigation Friday after a report of sexual assault facts about the filmmaker. The Judicial Police of Paris has been seized for verifications after the remarks of a woman revealed by Mediapart accusing Luc Besson of gestures displaced in 2002.
Luc Besson was one of the French figures caught in the wave of accusations of women claiming to have been victims of rape or sexual assault, after the fall of the American producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017.
Father of five children, Mr. Besson is also an influential businessman, behind the creation of the Cité du Cinéma north of Paris.
After him, the monument of French cinema, Gérard Depardieu, was accused of rape in August and the investigation in Paris continues in the utmost discretion