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| - French writer Ariane Fornia was found guilty of defamation on Wednesday after she accused a former government minister of sexually assaulting her at an opera performance 10 years ago. Fornia, 30, was fined a symbolic one euro ($1.10) in damages and ordered to withdraw the claim against Pierre Joxe, which had been published on her blog. She was also ordered to pay 3,000 euros towards Joxe's legal fees. Joxe, now 85, was a top Socialist Party politician who served as defence and interior minister in the government of ex-president Francois Mitterrand. In 2017, as the #MeToo movement was spurring hundreds of women to denounce abusive behaviour, Fornia accused him of assault while attending the Opera Bastille in Paris in 2010. She said Joxe touched her leg several times while trying to get under her dress during the performance. Joxe denied the allegation and demanded a public apology, launching his libel case last November after Fornia refused. The alleged assault is beyond France's statute of limitations, so no inquiry was opened into the claim. The ruling follows a similar case lodged last year against Sandra Muller, the founder of France's own MeToo movement. Muller was convicted in September of defaming a French TV executive she accused of sex harassment in a viral Twitter post. She was ordered to pay 15,000 euros ($16,600) as well as legal fees to the man she said made sexually lewd remarks at a party, a case that drew widespread scorn from women's rights activists. jmo/mlr/js/txw
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