Sexual violence: why this unnoticed decision matters

It is a court decision that went unnoticed, yet it has its importance. On 27 March 2024, the Paris Court of Appeal condemned Agence France Presse on appeal, finding that it had “has committed an error which gives rise to non-contractual liability”. In October 2019, the AFP published a dispatch on the Luc Besson case, whose writing and iconographic choice discredited the words of the actress Sand Van Roy in favor of those of the director against whom the Belgian actress had filed numerous complaints of rape. A sentence that underlines the urgency of starting a collective reflection on the media treatment of sexual violence.

The sincerity of the appellant called into question

In 2018, Sand Van Roy, seen in the film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planetshad filed a rape complaint against Luc Besson “after a sexual encounter that took place at the Hotel Bristol, in Paris, where the director was staying”. In a Mediapart survey, the actress said “having suffered, between March 2016 and May 2018, unwanted and “violent” sexual intercourse, unwanted and “violent” sexual intercourse, sometimes “to the point of blood”, to avoid, she said, being “blacklisted” or “ cut during the editing of their films. His speech on this “professional inspection report” had paved the way for eight other women, most of whom were interviewed by the courts, who had also reported inappropriate sexual behavior by the director. The latter has always denied the accusations against him.

In its decision of 27 March 2024, published online, the Court of Appeal detailed its reasoning:

The wording of the dispatch suggests that only several months had passed after she spent an entire night with Mr. [X], that the appellant decided to file a complaint against him. However, Mrs [K] he had claimed to have arrived at the Bristol Hotel only at 00:50, for a professional meeting, and that he hastily left the establishment at 2:18, after being the victim of rape. If the message does not contain remarks that could damage the honor or consideration of the caller, questions the sincerity of his statements and suggests that the version given by Mr. [X] appears more credible by mentioning that Ms. [K] I would have spent the whole night in the hotel. Also worth highlighting is the choice of the cropped photograph in which the two subjects appear smiling side by side strengthens the credibility of the version given by Mr. [X] and therefore discredits that of Mrs. [K].

Rethinking the media treatment of sexual violence

This victory is full of significance, since the actress has repeatedly denounced the media treatment reserved for her accusations against Luc Besson, considered one of the symbols of post-MeToo freedom of speech In France.

In 2022, one day before the courts dismissed the case relating to his French complaint (he has since brought the case to Belgian justice), Sand Van Roy had denounced on Twitter the distorted publications of some media which seemed to suggest that the decision was already been done against him.

This decision of the Court of Cassation once again raises the question of the media treatment of cases of sexual violence and the sexist discourse that can be contained in them. For to missthe author Rose Lamy listed some processes regularly taking place and insisted on the urgency of breaking these misogynistic reflexes to collectively rethink the way we talk about these topics in the media.

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Source: Madmoizelle