The Paris appeals court confirmed on Tuesday the dismissal of the open case against the filmmaker Luc Besson, whom the actress Sand Van Roy accused in 2018 of rape.
“The court confirmed the innocence of my client (…). Luc Besson regrets these four lost years,” said his lawyer, Thierry Marembert, after the verdict.
But the Dutch-Belgian actress’s lawyer said he will file an appeal with the Court of Cassation, France’s highest jurisdiction.
The actress filed a rape complaint in May 2018 against the French producer and director, a day after meeting him at a luxury hotel in the French capital.
The prosecution filed those complaints in 2019, considering that it had not been able to “characterize the alleged violation.”
Two months later, Van Roy reported other rapes and sexual assaults committed, according to her, during two years of relationship with “professional domain” by the director of “The Fifth Element”.
A French judge shelved the case in December 2021 and prosecutors asked for it to be dismissed in April.
Besson has admitted to having a relationship with Van Roy, who had minor roles in his films “Taxi 5” and “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.”
But he has always denied the accusations against him, which he described in 2019 as “a lie from A to Z”.
At least three other women have sued Besson for sexual harassment, but he has always denied all allegations.
