Franco-Polish director Roman Polansky to be tried for the first time in France for libel, after questioning the British actress’s allegations of rape charlotte lewis. The trial will be in 2024. French TV channel BFMTV reported it on Tuesday.
In 2010, Lewis claimed the director had raped her in 1983 at his home in Paris, after they met for the first time. Events would happen when he was 16 and Polanski 50.
Director of Rosemary’s babyalready indicted for this alleged crime last year, he will have to appear before the Paris Tribunal for his statements for the magazine Paris match in December 2019.
In that interview, the director of chinatown Y The pianist He cited the sexual assault allegations against him.
“The first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever mentioning her contradictions”, Polanski defended himself.
What Lewis said about the lawsuit
The actress, now 55, debuted her first film role pirates (1986), a film directed by Polanski himself.
The complaint filed by the actress led to the automatic opening of a judicial inquiry against the director and Paris matchwhose director will also sit in the dock on March 5, 2024, according to the French chain.
“I have to protect myself and my son, and I won’t stop until my honor is restored,” Lewis said on the same private French channel BFMTV.
The director has also been accused by other women of rape or abuse. Among them, the French actress and model Valentine Monnier, who claimed that the director sexually abused her in Switzerland during a ski trip in 1975.
“No one has been able to bring Roman Polanski to court since 1977, when he raped a 13-year-old girl,” Lewis recalled, referring to the crime for which the producer was convicted in the United States, and for which there is still a warrant. search and arrest against him.
The Geimer case and the US ban
In 1977 Polanski, who was 43 at the time – now 88 – drugged and forced Samantha Geimer, 13, an underage girl, to have sex after a photo shoot, an offense for which he was arrested.
Roman Polanski pleaded guilty and spent 42 days in jail, but while on bail and fearing he might have to go back to prison for a much harsher sentence, he fled the United States in late 1978.
The director supported his escape by saying that he had reached an agreement with the authorities in his time to serve only 48 days behind bars, but that he had fled the country because magistrate Laurence Rittenband intended to impose a harsher sentence than agreed.
In July of this year, at Geimer’s request, Los Angeles County Attorney George Gascón wrote to an appeals court to open the 1977 court documents related to that case.
The judicial conflict has restricted Polanski’s freedom of movement around the world for years, as the director fears the United States will seek his extradition. In 2017, he filed legal papers to try to return to Hollywood, but the request was denied by US authorities.
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Source: Clarin
