The director had given remarks that question the truth of the prosecution of sexual abuse against him by Actress Charlotte Lewis.
Le Monde with AFP
The filmmaker Roman Polanski was indicted for defamation, for remarks that question the truth of the prosecution of sexual abuse against him by Actress Charlotte Lewis, learned the France-Presse agency, Friday, October 8, with their lawyers, confirming information from BFM-TV.
M e Hervé Temime, lawyer of Roman Polanski, confirmed the lodging of his client, stressing that it is an “automatic” measure in defamation. Saying “perfectly serene on the fate of these prosecutions”, he added:
“The procedure and the hearing will allow us to rectify a large number of lies and false accusations. Which is not audible before the media can appear before law and be debated contradictorily.”
In a long maintenance published by Paris Match in December 2019, Mr. Polanski “considers that [Charlotte Lewis] is a liar, the assimilate to an affabulator”, lamented the lawyer of the British actress, M e Benjamin Chouai, who filed a complaint with civil party constitution in March 2020.
Targeted by other accusations of rape
Charlotte Lewis, born in 1967, had turned into the film pirates, directed by Roman Polanski in 1986. In Los Angeles, in 2010, she said he had been “sexually abused” by the filmmaker, in the Parisian apartment of Paris. The latter, in the early 1980s, when she was 16 years old.
But in his interview in Paris Match 2019, Mr. Polanski, targeted by other accusations of rape, referred to an interview she had granted in 1999 to a British tabloid, News of the World, to raise “contradictions” and a “odious lie” on the part of Charlotte Lewis. He emphasized the following phrase: “I knew that Roman had done something wrong in the United States, but I wanted to be his mistress (…). I probably wanted him more than he wanted him.”
The actress, however, challenged the veracity of the remarks. “Number of quotes assigned to me in the news of the world are not accurate,” she said.
A prospective trial before the Paris Correctional Court of Criminal Court may have to wait several months or even several years because the hearing times of this room are long.