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Roman Polanski, in a recent image. EFE

Monnier reported in November that the director had raped her when she was 18 while skiing in Switzerland

Who is the French actress who has again pointed to Roman Polanski as a rapist

Roman Polanski has denied in an exclusive interview granted to the French magazine Paris Match for raping in 1975 the former French actress and photographer Valentine Monnier while skiing in Switzerland. The actress denounced him publicly in November, 44 years after the events allegedly occurred.

" Roman Polanski. The great explanation. 'They try to make me a monster, " the French weekly title on its cover in its latest edition. The director denied the accusations in November through his lawyer, but this is the first time he has spoken of this case in an interview.

Monnier, secondary actress and former model, launched his self accusation against Polanski coinciding with the premiere in mid-November in France of the movie J'accuse ( The officer and the spy , in Spanish), the last film by Polanski, who won the Grand Prize of the Jury of the Venice Film Festival.

The film bears the same title in French as the open letter published in 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore by the French writer Emile Zola in favor of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a soldier of Jewish origin falsely accused of treason for anti-Semitic motives. Zola defended the military in that famous allegation. The case deeply divided France. Dreyfus was degraded and imprisoned. In 1906 it was shown that the sentence had been unfair and was rehabilitated .

In the interview with Paris Match , Polanski says that "barely" he remembers Monnier, and that he sounds for the photos that the press has published these days of her. What is clear is that the actress lies when she says he raped her. "Of course I don't remember anything she says, because it's false," says the director of El Pianista .

Polanski believes that "it is easy to accuse when everything has been prescribed for a dozen years and when it is certain that there can be no judicial process to exonerate me." The filmmaker also denies the allegations that he was beaten during the rape. "It's a delirium. I don't hit women," says Polanski. The director explains that two of the three witnesses that Monnier cites have died and the third has disappeared.

"For years they have tried to make me a monster," says Polanski, who says he has become accustomed to slander and has "hard skin like a shell." But he considers that for his children and his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, the accusations are "frightening" and suffer. He also complains that his family receives insults and threats on social networks.

Velentine Monnier, on the cover of 'Cosmopolitan' in the 70s.

Monnier is the fifth woman to publicly accuse Polanski of rape . The facts have already prescribed what the filmmaker cannot be judged for. The French actress decided to break her silence 44 years after she was allegedly raped by the director because she could not bear to compare the cruelty of the victim Dreyfus with which he claims to have suffered since 1977, following another case: the violation the young American Samantha Geimer.

Geimer, who was 13 at the time, accused the director of having drugged her to sexually abuse her at Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles (United States). When he was about to enter prison, Polanski fled the country and took refuge in France in 1978. Since then he has not been able to return to the United States.

In the interview with Paris Match , Polanski acknowledges that in 1977 he committed "a foul" and regrets that decades later his family has to pay for it. In his autobiography, written in 1984, Polanski said he had been convicted of "making love," recalls the magazine. The director believes that five decades ago people were more liberal than now.

"Only Samantha and I know what happened that day," says Polanski. The filmmaker explains that he is still in contact with Geimar. What she would like is to turn the page and that all this "media circus" will end, according to Polanski, because every time there is a new accusation against him, they talk about that case again and do not leave it alone.

The premiere of Polanski's new film in France has been surrounded by controversy, following Monnier's complaint. Protests of feminists forced to cancel the premiere of the film in at least one Parisian cinema, suspended interviews to promote the film and there were calls to the boycott. "Polanski rapist, guilty cinemas, complicit audience," shouted feminists.

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