Roman Polanski was indicted for defamation last summer after the former actress filed a complaint Charlotte lewis. This 54-year-old Englishwoman, who accuses the director of having raped her in the early 1980s, accuses her of an interview with Paris Match in December 2019. At that time, the 88-year-old filmmaker had been nominated multiple times for the César for his film I accuse. Appointments that had sparked outrage in light of the rape accusations that have hung over him for many years.
Near Paris Match, Roman Polanski then defended himself by evoking several plaintiffs, including Charlotte Lewis. The latter claims to have been raped during a meeting with the Franco-Polish filmmaker, at her Parisian home, when she was a young model looking for a role in the cinema. Emmanuelle Seigner’s husband then shouted a lie. Charlotte Lewis therefore counter-attacked by targeting not only the director, but also Constance Benqué, the president of Lagardère News (which owns Paris Match).
This Friday, December 17, 2021, from the Parisian, the ex-actress returned to this lawsuit. “When I read that Roman Polanski called me a liar, I was upset“, she explained, from London.”I told myself that was enough, that it was time to clear my name and that of my son. I have never changed a word of my story and am ready to go to court. This will be the first time Roman Polanski will be tried since he fled American justice in 1977. ”
The one who shared the shooting of the film Pirates in 1986 with Roman Polanski explains having first tried to take back his life and “to forget this episode“, despite eating disorders and diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. Charlotte Lewis was caught up in the past in 2010, when Roman Polanski was placed under house arrest, following Samantha Geimer’s complaint about a relationship that had arisen in 1977 (she was 13) When she tried to speak out in 2010, Charlotte Lewis was subjected to a “smear campaign“.
I am Roman Polanski. I make women famous
the Parisian today reports important information: two testimonies under oath evoking the alleged rape (now prescribed), recorded by the American justice, corroborate the version of Charlotte Lewis. Firstly there is Angela Ryan, College Girlfriend met at 12 in a Catholic school in London. As soon as she returned from Paris in 1983, the aspiring actress reportedly told her friend that she had been raped: “She said to me, ‘Angela, did you know that men put their penises in women’s mouths?’ I ended up asking him: ‘What happened in Paris?’ She answered me : ‘Roman Polanski raped me, Angela ‘”, Angela Ryan confirmed to our colleagues.
In May 2016, ex-model Karen Smith made another dependent statement and assured that she was in Polanski’s apartment the night she met Charlotte Lewis. It was she who would have convinced the filmmaker to entrust a role to the young Englishwoman for Pirates. After a dinner for three at the restaurant, “the director invites the two young girls to sleep on avenue Montaigne in the apartment adjacent to his, claiming that their hotel is uncomfortable“, reports the newspaper.
Karen Smith says she found Charlotte Lewis the next morning at Roman Polanski’s, “disheveled, very groggy, dizzy and struggling to stand on her feet“. She then told him that she had been raped. By confronting the filmmaker, Karen Smith would then have been told that he could not”To self-control” and : “I am Roman Polanski. I make women famousStill according to Karen Smith – who relies on her diary written at the time – a few months later on the set of Pirates, Charlotte Lewis would have asked a friend present to “protect” her.
In 2017, four other women accused the filmmaker of rape. In 2019, it was the turn of the former French model and photographer Valentine Monnier to denounce a rape that allegedly occurred in 1975 in Switzerland. Nearby Parisian, the lawyer of the filmmaker Hervé Temime commented on this new interview with Charlotte Lewis by affirming that his client “contests with the greatest firmness“these accusations.”He will report during the defamation trial brought to him all the elements demonstrating his lies and contradictions, in the rules of legal procedure and respect for the adversarial proceedings.. “
Roman Polanski remains presumed innocent of the facts with which he is accused until the final judgment of this case.