PARS.- The French justice acquitted today -May 14- director Roman Polanskiaccused of defaming the British actress Charlotte Lewis, who accused him of having raped her in the 1980s.
The 90-year-old director, whom several women have accused of sexual assault and rape, had dismissed Lewis’ accusations as hateful lies.
The judges of the Paris correctional court did not have to rule on whether or not the director raped Lewis, but on whether he abused freedom of expression in an interview with the magazine Paris Match of 2019.
In that interview, Polanski described as a hateful lie the accusation of the actress, who in 2010 stated that he sexually assaulted her during a casting at her home in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 years old.
Polanski’s declaration
“As 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 (her) contradictions ever being pointed out,” the director added in the interview.
The decision of the French justice coincides with the opening day of the 77th Cannes Film Festival, which opened its doors in the city on the Côte d’Azur this Tuesday with a new wave of mobilizations against sexual violence in French cinema.
During the defamation trial in March, Lewis, who starred in the film Pirates of Polanski in 1986, declared that he was the victim of a smear campaign that almost destroyed his life after his revelations.
Lawyers for Polanski, who did not attend the trial, cited an interview by Lewis published in 1999 by the defunct British tabloid News of the World.
The newspaper attributed these statements to Lewis: “I wanted to be his lover… probably I wanted him more than he did.” But the actress denounced that they were not accurate.
Polanski’s lawyers believe that their client was abandoned at the mercy of public opinion in the suffocating context of #Metoo and denounce an absurd trial.
Throughout his career, several women have accused the winner of three Oscars and a Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival for The pianist of sexual assault and rape, some when they were minors.
The director has always denied these accusations due to prescribed acts, which have not prevented him from working.
For more than 40 years, he has been considered a fugitive in the United States, where he was convicted of having illegal sexual relations with Samantha Gailey, a 13-year-old minor.
In 2025, the director must face a civil trial in the American city of Los Angeles, after a woman accused him of raping her in 1973 when she was a minor.
FUENTE: AFP
