The case is emblematic of the #Metoo movement in cinema. It was revealed on November 3, 2019 by an investigation and an interview with Adèle Haenel at Mediapart. In this article, the actress accuses the director of the film The devilsChristophe Ruggia, of having harassed and sexually assaulted her when she was a child. Revelations taken very seriously by the Paris prosecutor’s office which opened, three days later, an investigation entrusted to the central group of minor victims of the OCRVP (Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons).
After almost five years of investigation, the judge decided, at the end of July 2024, to refer the filmmaker to the criminal court. Christophe Ruggia is on trial Monday and Tuesday for assault on a 15-year-old minor by a person in authority. He faces ten years of imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 euros.
“He didn’t have a healthy relationship with them”
The actress met Christophe Ruggia during the filming of the film The devilsSO. The casting manager, Christel Baras, felt that something was wrong the day she accompanied Adèle Haenel to the filmmaker’s house to introduce her to him. Overheard by the police, she said that he wanted to stay alone with the child. “Leave me,” he would have told her. A request that embarrassed and angered her. “Be careful, it’s a little girl, a little girl of 11 and a half years old,” Christel Baras reportedly replied. Subsequently, she was removed from filming by the production, which took place in June and September 2001.
A period described by members of the film team as intense, “difficult” and trying, especially for the two main roles. “There was a kind of obsession on the part of the director to push the actors to their limits. He was dragging out takes unnecessarily. The team was uncomfortable with this duration, especially since it was children who were playing,” the film’s script told investigators. With the children, Christophe Ruggia behaved “like a big teenager, a big brother”. “But not a protective big brother,” she clarified. “He didn’t have a healthy relationship with them. »
“My darling”, “my sweetie”
“He did not behave inappropriately but he did not behave appropriately towards a 13-year-old girl,” said the film’s manager, who left the shoot because of of a “burn-out”.
Far from her family and loved ones, Adèle Haenel had the impression of having been isolated during filming by the director, a “guru” under whose “influence” she was. Her parents and the nanny of the two actors, she explained to investigators, had been kept away from the set by the filmmaker. “The relationship had started to evolve and we were no longer really aware of the limit between the character and me. This was valid for me as for the entire film team, Ruggia had asked them not to come and talk to me because they would distract me. » He called her “my darling”, “my sweetie”, took her on his knee in the restaurant. He was very attentive to her, often telling her that he “created” her and that she was “only great because of him”.
“Christophe told me he was in love”
The attacks reported took place after this shooting. Adèle Hanael began to go regularly to the director’s home on weekends. An “appointment” that she honored “out of obligation”. “I couldn’t escape it,” she added during her hearing. Christophe Ruggia asked her to sit on the sofa, caressed her thighs, chest, stomach, touched her crotch. “Christophe told me that he was in love with me, that the age difference was a curse for him and that unfortunately, I was an adult in a child’s body. » At the end of 2004, after a last sexual assault, Adèle Haenel understood and explained to the director that “it’s not good”. “It has to stop, it’s going too far. » In February 2005, she wrote him a letter, expressing her wish not to see him anymore.
At the beginning of 2019, Adèle Hanael learned that Christophe Ruggia was preparing a new film with teenagers entitled The Emergence of Butterflies. The main characters must have the same first names as those in the film The devils. This is what pushes the actress to reveal the facts in the media. Heard several times by the investigating judge, the filmmaker always contested the accusations, claiming to have never forced the young girl to go to his house, and to have never felt uncomfortable. According to him, she could have been traumatized by the filming of the film and would be angry with him for not having made more with him.
“Psychological repercussions”
“Adèle Haenel denounced in a detailed, constant and precise manner several episodes of touching of a sexual nature on her penis and her chest while providing details on the unfolding of the facts, their systemic nature during visits to the home of Christophe Ruggia, the configuration of the premises, their respective positions and the mode of operation,” noted the investigating judge in her referral order.
She underlined “the psychological repercussions” of the attacks on the complainant, who confided in relatives “over the years”. For the magistrate, “the absence of consent”, therefore “the constraint”, is characterized by the age of Adèle Haenel at the time of the facts and “the significant age difference between the two protagonists”. The actress has, for several years, slammed the door on French cinema.
The filmmaker’s lawyers, Fanny Colin and Orly Rezlan, did not wish to make a statement before the trial.
