(AFP) – Veteran French-Polish director Roman Polanski goes on trial in France on Tuesday on charges of defaming a British actress who accused him of sexual abuse in the 1980s.
The 90-year-old is wanted in the United States for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977, but faces several other charges of sexual assault dating back decades and past the statute of limitations. However, he has denied all allegations.
The director has a long career including Oscar-winning films “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown,” and “The Pianist.” Europe In 1978.
Mr. Polanski does not plan to appear in court, his lawyer said.
His accuser Charlotte Lewis, 56, is also expected to attend.
In 2010, Lewis accused Polanski of sexually assaulting her in a “worst form” in Paris after a casting trip there in 1983, when she was 16 years old. She appeared in his 1986 film Pirates.
In a 2019 conversation with Paris Match magazine, the French-born filmmaker refuted this, calling it a “terrible lie.”
According to Paris Match, he pulled out a copy of a 1999 article in the British tabloid News of the World, in which Lewis said: “I was fascinated by him and I was his lover.” “I wanted to be,” he was quoted as saying.
Ms. Lewis said the words she allegedly said in that interview were not accurate.
Lewis filed a complaint. defamationand the film director was automatically prosecuted under French law.
“The right to protect yourself”
“Discrediting and defaming (people) is an integral part of the Polanski regime and this is what Charlotte Lewis is calling out very bravely,” her lawyer Benjamin Shuai told AFP. Ta.
Mr Polanski’s lawyer, Delphine Mayet, said the Paris Match article was not defamatory.
“Polanski has a right to a public defense, and so do the women who have accused him,” she said.
His defense team asked Stuart White, who wrote the 1999 News of the World article, to appear as a witness during the trial. trial.
White was a Los Angeles-based reporter for the now-defunct News of the World, which he quit to become a screenwriter.
In a controversial article about Lewis, he allegedly described “how she went from prostitute to prostitute.” Hollywood”.
The tabloid, which has been repeatedly accused of defamation and fabricated quotes, was forced to shut down in 2011 after employees were accused of hacking phones in search of articles.
Lewis said in 2010 that she decided to speak out to counter suggestions by Polanski’s lawyers that the 1977 rape was an isolated incident.
She works in the Los Angeles office of Gloria Allred, a prominent lawyer who also represents women accusing American producer Harvey Weinstein, sitcom star Bill Cosby and former US President Donald Trump. I gave a lecture.
“Disclaimer”
France, Switzerland and Poland have refused to extradite Polanski to the United States.
But plans for Polanski to preside over the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, Retired in early 2017 Under pressure from feminists.
Between 2017 and 2019, four other women, three of whom were minors, came forward to say they were abused by Polanski in the 1970s. He denies all charges.
In it, California artist Marianne Barnard accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1975 after demanding that she pose naked when she was 10 years old.
Actress Adele Haenel at the 2020 Cesar Ceremony I went out in protest Won the award for Polanski’s film “The Officer and the Spy.”
The director has kept a low profile in recent years, and his latest film, “Palace,” premiered in Venice last summer without him.
The libel trial comes as French cinema is reeling from accusations that it has been a cover for abuse for too long.
At this year’s Cesar Awards, actress Judith Godreche Accusing the film industry of impunityafter accusing two directors of raping and sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers.
