AP Los Angeles

The Angels

Updated Tuesday, March 12, 2024-23:52

  • Roman Polanski on trial for calling an actress who accuses him of rape a prostitute

A woman has sued director

Roman Polanski,

alleging that he raped her in his home

when she was a minor in 1973.

The woman aired the accusations, which

Polanski, 90,

has denied, in a press conference with her lawyer,

Gloria. Allred,

this Tuesday.

The story is similar to the still-unsolved

Los Angeles

criminal sexual assault case that led Polanski in 1978 to flee to

Europe,

where he has remained ever since.

The woman who filed the civil suit testified that

she went to dinner with Polanski,

who she knew was under 18, in 1973, months after meeting him at a party.

She said Polanski gave her shots of tequila

at her house before her and at the restaurant.

She says

she was stunned

and Polanski took her home.

She later remembers that he lay next to her on the bed.

"He told her that he wanted to have sexual relations with her," the lawsuit says.

"Plaintiff, although stunned, told defendant 'No'. She told him, 'Please don't do it

.

' physical and emotional pain and suffering."

Defense attorney

Alexander Rufus-Isaacs

said in an email Tuesday that

Polanski "strongly denies the allegations

made against him in the lawsuit and believes that the proper place to try this case is in court."

The lawsuit was filed in June in

Los Angeles Superior Court

under a

California

law that temporarily allowed claims of childhood sexual abuse to be filed after the statute of limitations had expired.

Under the law, Polanski also could not be named initially, so the media did not pick up the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks compensation for damages to be determined at trial.

A judge has since authorized the plaintiff to use his name in the case.

The judge on Friday set a

trial date for 2025.

In his legal response to the lawsuit, Polanski's attorney denies all of his allegations and claims that the lawsuit is unconstitutional because it is based on a law that was not passed until 1990.

The woman

first came forward with her story in 2017,

after the woman in Polanski's criminal case asked a judge to

dismiss the charges,

which he refused.

At that time, the woman who

has now filed the civil lawsuit

gave her name and middle initial and said she

was 16 years old

at the time of the assault.

In the lawsuit and at Tuesday's news conference, she did not give her name and only said that she was a minor at the time.

He only spoke briefly.

"It took me a long time to decide to file this lawsuit against Mr. Polanski, but I finally made that decision," he said.

"I want to come forward to get justice and accountability."

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they were sexually abused.

Three more complaints

At least three other women

have alleged

that Polanski sexually abused them.

A major figure in the New Hollywood film renaissance of the 1960s and '70s, Polanski directed films such as "The Devil's Seed" and "Chinatown."

In 1977 he was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.

He reached a deal with prosecutors in which he would plead guilty to a lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse and would not have to go to prison beyond the prison time he had already served.

But Polanski feared that the judge would renege on the agreement before it was closed and

in 1978 he fled to Europe.

According to transcripts released in 2022, a prosecutor stated that the judge had, in fact, planned to reject the agreement.

Polanski's lawyers have been fighting for years to end the case and lift an international arrest warrant that confined him to his

native France, Switzerland and Poland,

where authorities have rejected American requests for extradition.

He continued making films and won an

Oscar for best director for "The Pianist"

in 2003. But the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled him

in 2018 after the #MeToo movement gained momentum.