Sued for defamation by British actress Charlotte Lewis, filmmaker Roman Polanski was acquitted on Tuesday by the Paris judicial court.
The 90-year-old director, accused of sexual assault and rape by several women, including Charlotte Lewis, described the latter’s accusations as “odious lies”.
The judges of a correctional chamber specializing in press cases did not have to rule on whether or not Roman Polanski raped the British actress but only whether or not the filmmaker made abusive use of his freedom. of expression in an interview published by the French magazine Paris Match in December 2019.
The remarks pursued amount to a “value judgment on the fickle nature of the civil party”, estimated the magistrates. The court discerned “a significant gap between the admiration and recognition (of the actress) towards the director, which she publicly expressed until 2010, and the denunciation of the violent nature of their relationship at the time where she decided to participate in the vindictiveness committed against him.
According to the court, there is in the remarks pursued “no fact likely to harm the honor and consideration of the civil party”. “It’s an important decision,” said Delphine Meillet, Roman Polanski’s lawyer, at the end of the hearing. “We can doubt the word of an accuser,” she insisted.
“A very sad day”
Charlotte Lewis, in tears, expressed her “sadness”. “It’s a very sad day for women who report their attackers,” she said. Her lawyer, Me Benjamin Chouai, indicated that his client would “probably” appeal. “It’s not over,” he warned.
Asked in Paris Match about the accusations of sexual assault and rape brought against him by several women, including Charlotte Lewis, the director of “Rosemary’s Baby” replied: “you see, the first quality of a good liar is “It’s an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever pointing out her contradictions.”
The director described the actress’s accusations as “odious lies”. 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.
“Contradictions”
To illustrate the “contradictions” according to them of the complainant, Roman Polanski’s lawyers had unearthed during the trial an interview given by the actress in 1999 to the tabloid News of the World in which she expressed her admiration for the director who gave her given 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.
For Roman Polanski’s lawyers, their client was “thrown out to pasture in the public square” in “the stifling context of #MeToo”, the movement for the liberation of women’s speech.
Roman Polanski, who notably won an Oscar and a Palme d’Or at Cannes for “The Pianist”, has been accused of sexual assault and rape by around ten women over the course of his career, assertions that he has always contested and which did not prevent him from working. He has been considered a fugitive in the United States for more than forty years, after a conviction for “illegal sexual relations” with a 13-year-old minor, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer).
In 1977, arrested, accused of having drugged and raped this teenager, he spent 42 days in prison before being released and heading to Paris. He has since been the subject of an international arrest warrant from the American justice system.
The filmmaker is called to appear in 2025 in California, during a civil trial for the rape of a teenage girl in 1973, accusations that he contests “with the greatest firmness” according to his Parisian lawyer.
