(Paris) A defamation lawsuit in Paris has been ordered against director Roman Polanski following a complaint by actress Charlotte Lewis for remarks in which the filmmaker questioned the veracity of the sexual abuse of which she was the victim. accused, AFP learned on Wednesday from a source familiar with the matter.
Posted at 12:52 p.m.
An order of August 30 returns to the Paris Criminal Court, on a date not yet fixed, Mr. Polanski, 89, never tried until then in France in a file relating to these accusations of sexual abuse.
In press law, referral to court is almost automatic in such a procedure and the merits of the charges are examined at the hearing.
Solicited, the lawyers for Mr. Polanski, Mr.are Hervé Temime and Delphine Meillet, did not wish to comment and “reserve their explanations for the court”. The second added that she “did not know if Mr. Polanski intended to appear” or would be represented at the hearing.
The publishing director of Paris Matchwho had published the interview in question, will also be judged in this case.
In a long interview published by the weekly in December 2019, Mr. Polanski declared in particular: “You see, the first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever noticing these contradictions”.
“It’s almost time for the hearing. We await it with envy and serenity”, welcomed Wednesday Me Benjamin Chouai, lawyer for the British actress with Me Fabrice Epstein. He had filed a complaint with civil action in March 2020.
Charlotte Lewis, born in 1967, had acted in the film Pirates directed by Roman Polanski in 1986. In 2010, she claimed in Los Angeles to have been “sexually abused” by the filmmaker, in his Paris apartment in the early 1980s, when she was 16 years old.
But Mr. Polanski, targeted by other accusations of rape, evokes in his interview with Paris Match of 2019 “contradictions” with his remarks of 2010 and an “odious lie” on the part of Mher Lewis, citing a 1999 interview she gave to the British tabloid News of the World.
The filmmaker underlined the following sentence attributed to Mher Lewis in 1999: “I knew Roman had done something wrong in the United States, but I wanted to be his mistress […]. I probably wanted it more than he wanted it.”
The actress, however, challenged the veracity of these past remarks in 2010. “Many of the quotes attributed to me in the article by News of the World are not accurate,” she said.
In February 2020, Roman Polanski received the César for best director for I accuse.