British actress Charlotte Lewis on Wednesday lost on appeal the defamation lawsuit she filed against director Roman Polanski for calling her a liar when she accused him of rape.
The Paris Court of Appeal “confirmed the judgment undertaken” at first instance, which acquitted the 91-year-old filmmaker last May, also accused of sexual assault and rape by several women.
Ms Lewis appealed the criminal court's judgment. But the prosecution not having done so on its side, the acquittal on the criminal level had become definitive. The court of appeal had to say whether the director was still guilty of a “civil wrong” and should therefore pay him damages.
The court ultimately considered that there was no civil fault.
“It is a decision which is very questionable because it is offering Roman Polanski a form of license to kill in the media,” commented to AFP Ms. Lewis's lawyer, Me Benjamin Chouai. “He has the right to defame, to discredit, to smear, he will surely continue to do so against Charlotte Lewis but also surely against other women,” he added, indicating that he was going to take stock with his client, who was absent when the decision was announced, to possibly appeal to the Court of Cassation.
– “Freedom of expression” –
“It is an extremely satisfactory decision, we can say that it is a great day for freedom of expression, since it has once again been confirmed and validated that when you have been accused in the press you can defend yourself in the press”, on the contrary welcomed Me Delphine Meillet, Mr. Polanski's lawyer.
During the hearing before the Court of Appeal, it asked “in the name of what” an “accused thrown out to pasture in the public square” would not have “the same freedom of speech as his accusers”.
In this case, justice was not to determine whether or not Roman Polanski had raped the British actress but only whether or not the filmmaker had made abusive use of his freedom of expression in an interview published by Paris Match. in December 2019.
Asked in this article about the accusations against him, the director of “Rosemary's Baby” replied: “The first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever highlight its contradictions.
In 2010, during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, Charlotte Lewis recounted having been attacked during a casting organized at Roman Polanski's house in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 years old.
To illustrate the “contradictions” according to them of the complainant, Roman Polanski's lawyers had unearthed during the first instance trial an interview given by the actress in 1999 to News of the World in which she expressed her admiration for the director who gave him a role in his film “Pirates” in 1986.
“He fascinated me and I wanted to be his mistress. I probably wanted him more than he wanted me,” she reportedly confided to the British tabloid. The actress partly contests the words attributed to her by the newspaper.
The Paris criminal court had considered in its acquittal judgment that there was “no fact in the comments pursued likely to undermine the honor and consideration of the civil party”.
Roman Polanski, who notably won an Oscar and a Palme d'Or at Cannes for “The Pianist”, has been considered a fugitive in the United States for more than forty years, after a conviction for “illegal sexual relations” with a minor of 13 years old.
A civil trial of the director for rape of a minor in 1973 which was scheduled for August 2025 in California was recently canceled after an agreement between the parties.
