At the Paris judicial court,
Visibly nervous, Adèle Haenel chews gum and walks in circles behind the benches of the civil parties. The hearing has not yet started this Monday afternoon, when the defendant, Christophe Ruggia, 59, also arrives in room 2-01 of the judicial court, full to capacity. A little before 2 p.m., the president of the court, Gilles Fonrouge, begins reading his report. The 35-year-old actress stares insistently at the filmmaker whom she accuses of harassment and sexual assault. Elbows resting on the tablet, the defendant avoids meeting his black gaze. He turns to the magistrate who mentions the “touching”, the “tactile, ambiguous gestures” and the “declarations of love” of the director to the young actress after the filming of the film The Devilswhen she was around twelve years old.
Suddenly, a few tears roll down the red cheeks of the young woman, gray shirt and black sleeveless sweater. A pen in her left hand, she stands up and scribbles a few notes on a sheet of paper. She puts it down and grabs a tissue when the room plunges into darkness. Adèle Haenel watches with difficulty the seven extracts from the film broadcast on a large screen where we see her naked. After a suspension of the hearing, the president calls Christophe Ruggia to the stand and asks him to “deliver a reflection” on the relationship he had with his young actress on the set of the film. The defendant “became aware” that the actress “had been shocked”, “traumatized”, by the filming. There were “difficult scenes to play,” he admits. The character played by Adèle Haenel is autistic and discovers her sexuality. “With Adèle, there was specific preparation before each shot,” he explains, adding that he observed “for two years” a young autistic woman in a Parisian hospital.
“She was radicalized”
“Between 2001 and 2005, did you have a romantic relationship with an adult woman? » asks President Fonrouge. “Not an ongoing relationship,” replies the defendant. According to him, Adèle Haenel now “thinks” that he was “in love with her” at the time because he was “fascinated” by the actress she was. The gestures he made had “nothing to do” with those he would have had with an adult woman, assures the director, recognizing that they were both “very close” on the set. He should have “framed” it more, he says. “Indeed, when she came on my lap, I should have told her no, for example. » He finds it difficult to justify why he invited the young girl to his home almost every Saturday afternoon. “I have no requests from her, in my head I imagine building a cinema family,” says the defendant, adding that Adèle Haenel was “in demand” to learn and talk about cinema with him. “Often, she’s the one hanging around” at his house because she doesn’t want to leave.
She would then have felt “betrayed, humiliated”, he says, because he did not make a second film with her. She allegedly wrote him letters – which he did not keep – in which she spoke of her disappointment. According to him, she would have “reconstructed” the facts to take revenge. He swears he “never” put his hand on her chest or his pants when she was at his house. It’s a “pure lie”, he insists, preferring to speak of “gestures of tenderness”. In her chair, Adèle Haenel seethes, the actress fiddles with her fingers and stops herself from reacting. When she gave an interview to Mediapart, she spoke of “gestures that she reinterpreted”. “She starts lying from the moment she is in front of the police,” he says. “She was radicalized and she got involved in a #MeToo thing in France, look at her journey over the past five years: the Césars with Polanski, her support for Adama Traoré…”
“We had to launch a #MeToo in France”
The actress's lawyer asks him what he did with his client, for three and a half years, when she went to his house on Saturday afternoons. “We talked, we listened to music, I showed him videos on YouTube. » The criminal lawyer does not hide his astonishment. “YouTube was created in 2005.” Christophe Ruggia says he was the victim of a “Stalinist trial”, namely the Mediapart article revealing Adèle Haenel’s accusations. “It destroyed my life,” he claims. Before launching: “We had to launch a #MeToo in France, it fell on me. » The defendant, he said, “never kissed Adèle Haenel”. “And I never tried to kiss her on the mouth, it never occurred to me,” he says, specifying however that the actress has “an overflowing sensuality that she still today.” “It’s something she has in her that others will never have. »
The longer Christophe Ruggia's hearing lasts, the more Adèle Haenel has difficulty hiding her exasperation. At 7:15 p.m., she gets up and walks decisively towards the bar. The president questions her about the reasons which pushed her to confide in Mediapart. The actress had learned, at the time, that the filmmaker was planning to make a new film with teenagers. A way, according to her, of denying “the attacks he subjected me to”, she explains, her hands crossed behind her back. She told her story to the news site to break this “long unbearable and imposed silence”. She did not file a complaint because she thought that “justice would never be interested in this story”. “I was afraid that people wouldn’t actually believe me,” she insists.
“He had become the main adult in my life”
The director “poses himself to be the victim of the story”, she gets annoyed, before explaining how she was under the influence. “Too close a closeness” had developed between them at the time, especially since the young girl was “not supersupervised” by her family. She later understood “that what was happening was not normal”. The director having, in a certain way, introduced him to “the murky and vague bases” of sexuality on the set of the film. “He had become the main adult in my life,” she observes. He ruined everything. » At the time, she noticed that Christophe Ruggia was “suffering”. “He suffers that I am not in love with him. » The complainant recounts the devastating effects of this affair on her life, “depression” until she was 28 which “shaked her a lot”. “I behave a little dangerously. I was completely disoriented for periods of my life, impossible to get from Belleville to République. »
“There wasn’t a time when I was at his house where nothing happened,” adds Adèle Haenel. The assessor wants to understand why she went back there every weekend. “I felt obliged because I had the impression that without him I was going to fall back into a void firm, I felt indebted. I wasn't considering anything else. The only way out of this situation was death, for me or for him. » The actress describes her body “which tenses up” on the sofa when he kisses her “on the neck”, when he calls her “sweetie”. When she resisted, he looked at her and whispered: “Well what? » The defendant has denied the facts since the start of the case, recalls the judge. “He’s a big liar. I say it while looking at him: You are a big liar Mr. Ruggia. »
“It’s despicable to have done this to children”
“He says he did nothing other than offer Fingers and Orangina! But what is he talking about? What did we talk about these hundred Saturdays? What films were we watching? We quickly reach the end of the conversations. At first, he warms up, he kisses my neck, he caresses my thigh moving his hand towards my sex. I tense up, he gets excited, puts his hand on my chest,” the actress continues. The director mentioned in particular the young girl's “porn actress look”. “We’re talking about a 12-year-old child! Does the look of a porn actress exist? “, she loses her temper, before apologizing for getting “angry”. Christophe Rugia “keeps sexualizing me, it disgusts me,” annoys Adèle Haenel.
Today, she “regrets having made this film” with him making her “uncomfortable” and “ashamed”. “It’s despicable to have done this to children. » But the problem, she insists, is the attacks. She wishes, through this trial, “that justice be done to this child” that she was. On the other hand, she confides that she does not expect anything from Christophe Rugia “who is still at the same point”.
The trial ends this Tuesday.
