Accused by the actress of having cast doubt on the sexual violence of which she accused him, the filmmaker was acquitted on Wednesday December 4 by the Paris Court of Appeal. It was not a question of determining whether or not Roman Polanski had raped the British actress but whether or not he had made abusive use of her freedom of expression.
British actress Charlotte Lewis lost this Wednesday, December 4, on appeal the defamation lawsuit she had 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” in first instance, which acquitted the 91-year-old filmmaker last May who was also accused of sexual assault and rape by several women.
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. The filmmaker questioned the veracity of the sexual abuse of which Charlotte Lewis had accused him in 2010, during a press conference at the Cannes festival. She said she was attacked during a casting call organized by Roman Polanski in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 years old.
In the article, the director vigorously defends himself from these accusations of sexual abuse against the actress and complains of “odious lie” on his part. He mentions an article about him published in 1999 in the British tabloid News of the World, highlighting the following sentence attributed to the actress: “I knew Roman had done something wrong in America, but I wanted to be his mistress […]. I probably wanted it more than he wanted it.” The actress, however, contested the veracity of these past comments in 2010.
Charlotte 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 “civil wrong” and as such had to pay him damages. She decided no.
Several dozen accusations
“It’s a decision that is very questionable because it offers Roman Polanski a form of media license to kill”commented the plaintiff's lawyer, 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.
Roman Polanski, who won three Oscars and a Palme d'Or, has been accused of sexual assault and rape by around ten women throughout his career, accusations that he has always contested and which have not stopped him from to work. He has been considered a fugitive in the United States for more than 40 years after a conviction for “illegal sexual relations” with a 13-year-old minor, Samantha Geimer.
In 1977, arrested, accused of having drugged and raped this teenage girl, he spent 42 days in prison before being released and then fleeing to Paris facing the risk of being imprisoned again. He is the subject of an international arrest warrant from the American justice system but has escaped extraditions. Samantha Geimer has since requested several times that the charges be dropped.
