A French court convicted the director Christophe Ruggia on Monday of sexually assaulting the actress Adèle Haenel when she was a minor, handing him a four-year sentence — two years under house arrest and the rest suspended.
It was the first major case to examine an accusation of sexual misconduct in French cinema since the #MeToo movement, which emerged in 2017 and was met with a severe backlash in France. It is also an important milestone for the French courts, which feminist activists in the country have denounced as ineffective, or even discriminatory, in cases of sexual violence.
Mr. Ruggia stood at attention as the judges explained the guilty verdict.
“You took advantage of the influence you had on the young actress Adèle Haenel,” the head judge, Gilles Fonrouge, said.
Ms. Haenel did not show any clear emotion when the verdict — which also ordered Mr. Ruggia to pay 50,000 euros, or about $51,300, in damages — was read out. But after she left the courtroom, and was applauded by a crowd outside, she paused for a moment to thank her supporters.
“Thank you all for coming, and for advancing human rights, by your presence, and the fact that we don’t give up,” she said.
“We’re in this together,” she added.
Mr. Ruggia’s lawyer, Fanny Colin, called the ruling “not just unjustified but dangerous,” stating that the judges had ruled to satisfy public opinion and “crushed” the fundamental rule of law — having the benefit of the doubt. Mr. Ruggia planned to appeal, she said.
Mr. Ruggia cast Ms. Haenel in his 2002 film “The Devils,” about a relationship bordering on incest, when she was 12 and he was 36. After the filming finished, she continued to visit him regularly on Saturdays over three years at his apartment, where, the court ruled, he made “sexualized moves” toward her.
When Ms. Haenel first revealed such accusations publicly in 2019, she was the first major French actress to speak out about her personal story of abuse since the #MeToo movement emerged. She was a rising star, praised for fierce yet sensitive performances that had earned her two Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscars.
Mr. Ruggia was a relatively unknown director, but in the insular world of French cinema, he had a prominent role in the French directors’ association and had a reputation for making films about social justice and for defending migrants and human rights.
The case stirred huge interest in the country. The courtroom was packed with Ms. Haenel’s supporters over a two-day trial in December and again on Monday for the verdict.
“Ruggia’s conviction is a warning to producers and directors to be careful,” said Geneviève Sellier, an emeritus professor of cinema studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University and the author of “The Cult of the Auteur.” The ruling, she said, puts an end to the long-held French romantic tradition of sanctifying male artists and holding them above the law when it came to their abusive treatment of usually younger female muses.
“It clearly indicates that it is a relationship of domination of an older man over a very young woman,” Ms. Sellier said.
Among Ms. Haenel’s supporters in the court was Judith Godrèche, a French film star whose public accusations against two directors dating from when she also was a young actress of 14, relaunched the #MeToo movement in France last year. In tears after the decision, she hugged Ms. Haenel and called the court’s decision “hard-hitting” and “unequivocal.”
“There are similarities in our stories. Both are stories of children, told from our adult position,” Ms. Godrèche said in a text message later, adding that she did not believe her complaints would ever see a courtroom, as they were filed beyond the statute of limitations.
During the two-day hearing, two conflicting versions of the past were presented. Ms. Haenel depicted the regular Saturday sessions in Mr. Ruggia’s Paris apartment, where he was meant to teach her the classics of French cinema, as a ruse to sexually assault her.
Mimicking his voice, she recounted how he would caress her thighs, kiss her on the neck while breathing heavily, put his hands under her T-shirt to touch her breasts and her belly, and under her pants to reach the edge of her intimate parts. She broke ties with him when she was 15 and, for years afterward, described experiencing shame and depression.
She said she was speaking in court to defend her former 12-year-old self and other child victims who were hushed into silence, calling it the “most important thing I’ve done in my life — trying to break the loneliness of children.”
“It makes you want to die, in fact, when no one speaks,” said Ms. Haenel, now 35, who often writhed with anger in the courtroom, her face overcome by tics and her feet banging on the floor.
“Shut up!” she screamed at the director at one point, rushing out of the courtroom.
Mr. Ruggia discounted Ms. Haenel’s account as “pure lies.” But he acknowledged having kissed her on the head and grabbing her, but said it had been in a fatherly manner.
“These were affectionate gestures,” he said in court.
Although he talked about her overpowering sexuality, and wrote letters to her stating his heart was broken after she cut ties with him, Mr. Ruggia said he had never been in love with Ms. Haenel.
“For me, Adèle was a kid, a preadolescent,” he said.
Since the publication in 2019 of Ms. Haenel’s story in an extensively researched article in Mediapart, a French investigative site, Mr. Ruggia has been cast out of cinema. He moved to Brittany in northwestern France to care for his mother and lives off welfare. He said during the court proceedings he had been waiting years for the trial, “to see if I’m going to get my life back, if I’m going to be able to make films again or not.”
Since her disclosure, Ms. Haenel has also stopped working in cinema. She later explained in a public letter that she believed the industry protected sexual abusers and preferred that victims “disappear and die in silence.”
“I am canceling you from my world,” she wrote.
The trial’s subtext was how the justice system in France deals with perpetrators of sexual assault and their victims. According to a French parliamentary report published last month, eight out of every 10 rape victims do not go to the police, revealing a profound distrust in the system.
Among the few who do file formal complaints of rape, an astounding 94 percent are dismissed and never reach a courtroom, a 2024 report by a research institute specializing in public policy revealed. Ms. Haenel initially told her story to a French investigative journalist and said she did not trust the justice system.
“Justice ignores us,” she said at the time, “we ignore justice.”
Perhaps as a result of Ms. Haenel’s harsh criticism and the attention her case drew, the police investigation into her case was extremely rigorous and detailed.
She herself described the experience as like being given a tour of the U.S.S.R. by government minders — telling the Mediapart journalist Marine Turchi that she saw only the “beautiful premises, the most beautiful achievements, the most beautiful municipal gym” and none of the grim reality.
“The tendency of the police and the justice system to mistreat the victims has not disappeared,” said Ms. Sellier, the feminist film critic and author. “But, it’s now visible and exposed. And the need for training for the police and the justice system in these cases is now recognized as necessary.”
The problem, she added, was France was already struggling financially, and looking for places to cut. “There is no budget to do it,” she said. “That’s the missing step.”