{"id":22269,"date":"2022-05-24T08:01:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T12:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=22269"},"modified":"2022-05-24T08:01:28","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T12:01:28","slug":"luc-besson-french-director-cleared-of-rape-charges-by-paris-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/05\/24\/luc-besson-french-director-cleared-of-rape-charges-by-paris-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Luc Besson: French director cleared of rape charges by Paris court"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Paris Court of Appeal has dismissed a series of rape accusations against French film director Luc Besson.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The director of The Big Blue and Nikita was accused by Dutch-Belgian actress Sand Van Roy in 2018 of repeatedly raping her over two years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors dropped the case in early 2019, citing a lack of evidence, but re-opened inquiries later that year when Ms Van Roy made new allegations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Besson’s lawyer said the court had confirmed his client’s innocence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“About ten procedural initiatives by Ms Van Roy all ended in the same way. Luc Besson regrets these four lost years,” Thierry Marembert added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms Van Roy’s lawyer, Antoine Gitton, said the case had become a “a sordid news item” and announced his intention to appeal against the decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The case was one of the highest-profile controversies of the #MeToo era in France, AFP news agency notes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms Van Roy had accused Mr Besson of raping her just hours after they met at a hotel in Paris in May 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But the original investigation ended when French prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to pursue a case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In December, an investigating magistrate issued a dismissal order against the case citing “the absence of any material element to support the statements” of Ms Van Roy and prosecutors asked for it to be dropped last month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At least three other women accused the 63-year-old of sexual misconduct during testimony heard in court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Besson always denied these accusations. In 2019 he described the case against him as a “lie from A to Z”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The director has previously described Ms Van Roy, who appeared in his films Taxi 5 and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, as a “fantasist,” though he did admit to having a sexual relationship with her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Besson, a director, producer and screenwriter, is also known for his films Subway, Leon and The Fifth Element.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Paris Court of Appeal has dismissed a series of rape accusations against French film director Luc Besson. The director of The Big Blue and Nikita was accused by Dutch-Belgian actress Sand Van Roy in […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,6],"tags":[2913,6649,2740,8547,1846],"class_list":{"0":"post-22269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-world","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-luc-besson","12":"tag-paris","13":"tag-paris-court-of-appeal","14":"tag-rape-allegation","15":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22271,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22269\/revisions\/22271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}