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Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, a lawyer for
Ruggia, said the filmmaker denied any misconduct.
Actress Adele Haenel, who is now 31, has alleged that Ruggia
assaulted and harassed her between 2001 and 2004 after she was
cast in a Ruggia-directed movie called "Les Diables," or The
Devils.
According to Haenel's allegations, published in French media
outlet Mediapart in November last year, when she was first
harassed she was 12 years old and the abuse continued until she
was 15.
The Paris prosecutor's office in November opened a preliminary
probe into "sexual assault of a minor under 15 by a person of
authority, and sexual harassment".
Ruggia's arrest came days after French prosecutors opened a
separate investigation into allegations of rape of a child that
sent shockwaves through French cultural circles.
In a book published this month, Vanessa Springora, now 47 and
head of France's Julliard publishing house, alleged sexual abuse
by Gabriel Matzneff, an 83-year-old prominent author, when she
was 14.
Matzneff has said Springora was misrepresenting him as a pervert
and abuser.
The #MeToo movement, which began in the wake of the scandal
surrounding Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein, has sparked a
wave of allegations by people who say they were sexually abused
by those in powerful positions.
But the response in France so far has been relatively muted.
While many people in France have embraced the movement, some
prominent figures have not. Actress Catherine Deneuve put her
name, with 99 other French women, to a 2018 letter saying the #MeToo
campaign amounted to "Puritanism" and that men had the right to
"pester" women.
(Reporting by Matthieu Protard, Sophie Louet and Simon Carraud;
editing by Mike Collett-White)
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