Rape charges against film director Luc Besson are DROPPED in France
- The Lucy director was accused of rape by Dutch-Belgian actress Sand Van Roy
- The pair were in a two-year relationship but she said she was raped four times
- Besson had always denied the accusations, blasting them as a ‘lie from A to Z’
Rape charges against French film director Luc Besson have been dropped by a Paris court of appeal.
Dutch-Belgian actress Sand Van Roy had accused the Lucy director of raping her over a two-year on-off relationship, and filed a complaint against him in May 2018.
Prosecutors dropped the case in February 2019 citing lack of evidence, but a new investigation was opened later that year after Van Roy brought fresh charges against one of the highest-profile #MeToo controversies in France.
Rape charges against French film director Luc Besson (pictured) have been dropped by a Paris court of appeal
A magistrate then closed the case in December 2021 and prosecutors asked for it to be dropped in April.
Besson had always denied the accusations, describing the case in 2019 as ‘a lie from A to Z’.
‘The court confirmed my client’s innocence… Luc Besson regrets these four lost years,’ his lawyer Thierry Marembert said after the verdict.
But Van Roy’s lawyer Antoine Gitton said an appeal would immediately be filed for his client with France’s Court of Cassation.
Besson has admitted having a relationship with Van Roy, who had minor roles in his films ‘Taxi 5’ and ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’.
Dutch-Belgian actress Sand Van Roy had accused the Lucy director of raping her over a two-year on-off relationship (pictured with a tattoo reading Stop Violence Against Women’
Van Roy first went to the police in May 2018 after a meeting with Besson in a luxury Paris hotel.
Two months later she said that she had been raped four times over the two years when she had been ‘in a controlling professional relationship’ with the director.
She said she had feared for her career if she complained.
Police questioned Besson about the accusations in October 2018.
One actress later told prosecutors that she had to escape on ‘her hands and knees’ from an audition in Besson’s Paris office in 2002.
Other women have made allegations of sexual harassment against Besson but he has always denied all the allegations.