Jean-Claude Van Damme accused of knowingly having sexual relations with 5 trafficked Romanian women
The 64-year-old action star, known for his performances in Street Fighter and Double Impact, is accused of receiving five Romanian women as a 'gift' from a group of traffickers while in Cannes, France.
According to a report by the local CNN affiliate Antena 3, a criminal complaint has been filed with the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT).
The Independent has approached Van Damme's representatives and DIICOT for comment.
DIICOT launched their investigation after a woman allegedly witnessed the incident at an event organized by Van Damme in Cannes and shared what she had seen with prosecutors, according to the outlet.
Antena 3 quotes attorney Adrian Cuculis, who is representing one of the victims, as saying that 'several Romanians who are currently being investigated for forming a criminal group and pimping, allegedly offered Jean-Claude Van Damme five Romanian women — photo models in Romania — for him to have sexual relations with.'
Cuculis added that 'the person who received those benefits knew their condition,' and that the women "were in a state of vulnerability, with the suspicion that they were exploited within the meaning of Article 182 of the Criminal Code."
Cuculis told Antena 3 that the incident is part of a larger investigation into human trafficking and the trafficking of minors that has been carried out since 2020 by the Romanian Prosecutor's Office.
The outlet also reports that as the incident occurred in Cannes, France's High Court of Cassation will have to authorize criminal proceedings before the suspects identified in the case can be summoned to Romania to give statements.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, he appeared in a string of hits, including Kickboxer, Double Impact, Universal Soldier, Timecop, Street Fighter, and Sudden Death.
His more recent roles include playing the villain in The Expendables 2 in 2012 and providing voice work for the 2022 family film Minions: The Rise of Gru.
He starred as himself in the second season episode 'The One After the Super Bowl,' in which he was romantically pursued by both Monica (Courteney Cox) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
3 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Evil mum filmed boyfriend raping woman then threatened to share footage unless victim handed over £5k in blackmail plot
Victim had no idea she had been attacked until she saw footage SICK SCHEME Evil mum filmed boyfriend raping woman then threatened to share footage unless victim handed over £5k in blackmail plot Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A VILE mum filmed her boyfriend raping a woman then threatened to share the footage unless she handed over £5,000. The victim had no idea she had been sexually assaulted until Indre Bruziene sent her the twisted video. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 2 Indre Bruziene filmed her boyfriend raping a woman Credit: Kent Police It showed Vasile Raducanu, 33, "choreographing" the attack by "moving" the victim as Bruziene, 40, filmed through a window. Bruziene demanded the woman send £5,000 or she would share it with her family. The fiend also sent two photographs to the woman to add to her "degradation and humiliation". But the brave victim refused to pay the money and instead called the police. Radacanu, who is Romanian, and Bruziene, from Lithuania, have now been jailed for a total of 15 years and nine months. Maidstone Crown Court heard in September 2020, the sick couple invited the victim to their home in Kent. They plied her with alcohol before Raducanu raped her while she unconscious and unable to consent. The woman woke the next morning in her own bed with no recollection of what had happened to her. On March 15, 2021, she received a call from Bruziene who accused the woman of breaking up her family. Bruziene then sent her the horrific footage and demanded £5,000 or it would be sent to the victim's husband. The woman informed her family before contacting the police - leading to the twisted couple's arrest. In a victim impact statement, the woman said: "I didn't know what to do. I felt ashamed. I was emotionally devastated. "When I found out about this incident I couldn't sleep for a long time….I kept thinking about the incident, trying to understand what had happened. "The fact I don't remember what happened that night troubles me deeply. I try to recall it but I can't and that causes me constant distress." Radacanu was jailed for 12 years and six months for two counts of rape, one of attempted rape and two counts of sexual assault. Bruziene, who was found guilty of blackmail, was sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Detective Constable Hollie Brown said: "The criminal actions of Radacanu and Bruziene were unspeakably vile as they took advantage of a vulnerable victim who was not aware of what was happening to her. "As soon as the victim received the video of her abuse from Bruziene she showed great courage in disclosing her ordeal to her family and then contacting the police. "Detectives then swiftly secured the offenders phones and they have now, quite rightly, been brought to justice."
Time Out
5 hours ago
- Time Out
Popular Tai Hang dai pai dong Bing Kee Cha Dong has closed until further notice
Say it isn't so! Bing Kee Cha Dong – an iconic dai pai dong in Tai Han g – announced on its Instagram account last weekend that it is 'taking a long holiday' indefinitely due to staff shortage and lack of manpower. Loved by Hongkongers and tourists alike, the old-school, tin-roofed dai pai dong has been in operation for more than half a century, and is frequently listed in Hong Kong travel guides as a foodie destination, growing its appeal as a social media 'check-in' spot. Bing Kee has a long history stretching all the way back to the 1950s. It first appeared on the scene as a bakery specialising in traditional Chinese pastries before transitioning into a casual dai pai dong serving local, down-to-earth diner fare. Bing Kee's claim to fame is its authentic Hong Kong-style milk tea – it was even ranked by CNN as one of the top four spots in the city for the classic beverage – and the eatery is also notable for its pork chop noodles, Hong Kong-style French toast, and corned beef and egg sandwiches. Hong Kong superstar Eason Chan has been spotted dining at this no-frills diner on Shepherd Street multiple times, and Bing Kee has even been featured on the silver screen in Hong Kong comedy The Romancing Star 2 and mainland Chinese drama The First Frost. Open-air food stalls like Bing Kee are a dying breed in Hong Kong these days, but there are still a handful of them kicking around, including Sing Kee on Stanley Street, Sing Heung Yuen on Mei Lun Street, and Yuk Yip Dessert on Elgin Street, all in Central. If you're keen to venture deeper into the heart of Kowloon, Oi Man Sang in Sham Shui Po is a must-visit for its killer wok hei aromas and irresistible salt-and-pepper squid dish. Fingers crossed that Bing Kee will return from its 'hiatus' sooner rather than later!
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
The AI future is too scary even for James Cameron. Where can the Terminator franchise go from here?
James Cameron has a confession: he can't write Terminator 7. And it's not because Hollywood won't let him, as he's too busy making the new Avatar – it's because reality keeps nicking his plotlines. 'I'm at a point right now where I have a hard time writing science-fiction,' Cameron told CNN this week. 'I'm tasked with writing a new Terminator story [but] I don't know what to say that won't be overtaken by real events. We are living in a science-fiction age right now.' It's an understandable quandary for the veteran film-maker. Back in 1984, when the first Terminator movie came out, there was genuine shock value in the idea of a killer robot travelling through time from a future in which the wretched dregs of humanity survive in a chrome-plated hellscape dominated by their robot overlords. These days, the only far-fetched part of the movie is the bit where the T-800 turns up alone and completely naked, as opposed to arriving flanked by a swarm of AI-guided drones. We may not have achieved time travel just yet, but we do have artificial intelligences capable of quietly teaching themselves sarcasm, city-wide facial recognition, and robot learning systems deciding who lives and dies. That's the heart of Cameron's problem: in 1984, Skynet was a terrifying piece of speculative fiction. In 2025, it's basically LinkedIn with nukes. The creeping dread of AI isn't a future shock any more; it's the news cycle. From AI-powered spyware in our pockets to deepfake scams and voice-mimicking chatbots, the Terminator franchise no longer has the monopoly on making you want to hurl your hi-tech personal possessions into the sea. Cameron seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place here, especially as this grand old sci-fi saga hasn't exactly been blowing anyone's CPU in well … decades. Terminator: Dark Fate, which the saga's creator at least had a basic hand in developing, struggled at the 2019 box office despite the return of Linda Hamilton and a storyline that tried to mix the franchise's classic 'unstoppable hunter' formula with a reunion tour for its surviving stars. Before that, we have to go all the way back to 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day to find a film that audiences really warmed to. The wilderness years between those two movies were littered with sequels that were too bleak, or too daft. What Cameron should be looking for is a complete system reboot to reinvigorate the saga in the way Prey brought fans back to Predator and Alien: Romulus restored interest in slimy Xenomorphs. All evidence suggests that the 70-year-old film-maker is far more interested in the current challenges surrounding AI, superintelligences and humankind's constant efforts to destroy itself, which doesn't exactly lend itself to the sort of back-to-basics, relentless-monsters-hunt-a-few-unlucky-humans-for-two-hours approach that has worked elsewhere. The challenge here seems to be to fuse Terminator's core DNA – unstoppable cyborgs, explosive chase sequences, and Sarah Connor-level defiance – with the occasionally rather more prosaic yet equally scary existential anxieties of 21st-century AI doom-mongering. So we may get Terminator 7: Kill List, in which a single, battered freedom fighter is hunted across a decimated city by a T-800 running a predictive policing algorithm that knows her next move before she does. Or T7: Singularity's Mom, in which a lone Sarah Connor-type must protect a teenage coder whose chatbot will one day evolve into Skynet. Or Terminator 7: Terms and Conditions, in which humanity's downfall comes not from nuclear warfare but from everyone absent-mindedly agreeing to Skynet's new privacy policy, triggering an army of leather-clad enforcers to collect on the fine print. Or perhaps the future just looks terrifying enough without Cameron getting involved – which, rather worryingly for the future of the franchise, seems to be the director's essential point. Then again, if anyone can make the apocalypse feel even worse than it already does, it's the man who previously convinced us that autonomous drones would hunt humans from the sky and that machines would learn to think and kill for themselves. We should have confidence he can do it again.
