Raquel VillaécijaParis Correspondent
Paris Correspondent
Updated Friday, March 8, 2024-9:37 p.m.
Interview Roman Polanski's victim speaks: "I have already forgiven him"
Courts Samantha Geimer asks to close the rape case she suffered from Roman Polanski when she was 13 years old
Roman Polanski trials, willing to return to the United States to close the case of rape of a minor
She was only 16 years old
and was starting her film career.
He was 50
and already a successful filmmaker.
The British actress Charlottte Lewis (56) has put
Franco-Polish director
Roman Polanski (90) in the dock this week, whom she accuses of defamation and of having raped her in the late 80s.
This is the first trial held against the acclaimed director of
The Devil's Seed
(1968), who is now 90 years old, since
he fled the United States in 1977,
accused of
having abused a minor
.
The American justice system continues to demand him to this day and
considers him a fugitive.
The filmmaker
did not appear
on Tuesday before the Paris Correctional Court in what is the first trial against him since his escape.
His lawyers represented him.
The one who did
appear was Lewis.
The trial is not for her rape, but for the
statements
that the producer also made then, in which he said that he lied and accused her of having
worked as a prostitute
.
This process is also being held amid a wave of complaints in France by women against personalities from the world of cinema, such as the actor Gerard Depardieu,
André Téchiné
or
Alain Corneau.
Actress Charlotte Lewis arriving at court this week.AFP
Born in London in 1967, Charlotte Lewis began her
modeling
career when she was just
a child.
She introduced them to a friend of Polanski in 1986, when he had already fled the United States.
A few years later she starred in
Pirates
, a
mega adventure production
directed by Polanski that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival.
After this film, Ella Lewis
tried her luck in Hollywood,
where she starred in several films.
This scandal has marked her career.
It allegedly occurred in 1986, when
she was 16 years old,
although
she did not reveal it until 2010
.
According to her story, the film director
raped her in her apartment
on Avenue Montaigne, one of the most expensive streets in Paris.
According to what the British actress said at the hearing held on Tuesday, she arrived in Paris accompanied by another model and Polanski installed them in her apartment.
"We went out to dinner,
we returned to the apartment and she went to sleep and
she left me alone with Roman.
That's where she raped me," he has declared in court.
THE 'ME TOO'
He says that he did not report it before because he was not aware: "
I did not know
that what had happened to me
was a rape.
I knew that something was not right, but I could not put a name to it," he declared.
"He hasn't been horrible, he hasn't hit me and then we started
working together.
I respected him and
he was nice to me,"
she explained.
Polanski
has denied everything
and denounced in an interview on
Paris Match
that he gave in 2019 the
"hateful lies"
of the British actress.
To support her testimony, she dusted off an interview that she gave in 1999 to
News of the World
and for which she charged 35,000 euros in which she stated that at
"the age of 14 she was a prostitute
and that in her adolescence she wanted to become the filmmaker's lover." .
Roman Polanski.AFP
"I knew that Roman had had problems in the United States, but I didn't know much about the case. In any case,
I was fascinated by him
and wanted to become his lover," the press article reads.
"He had already cast me
in his movie,
Pirates.
It's not like I had to sleep with him to get the role. Anyway,
the desire
was stronger
on my part
than his."
"They try
to make a monster of me
. For years I have become accustomed to slander. My skin has hardened," Polanski said in the magazine.
He refers in the interview to several
statements by Lewis
in which he says: "
I owe everything to Roman Polanski
, to God and to my mother, who brought me into this world."
"The filming (of
Pirates
)
has been a dream for me.
I had the impression of being out of time. As soon as the filming was over I felt like an orphan. There is
a story of friendship between Roman and me,"
he says, reproducing the words that she said.
It was following this interview with the filmmaker, who has been accused by
more women of harassment
, when Lewis
sued him for defamation
.
It was in 2019, almost a decade after she said he had raped her.
The actress maintains the accusations and says that
"the defamation
was much
worse than the rape."
To conclude, this week she declared the following to the newspaper
Le Parisien
: "I have had to confront people who think that I became
a prostitute at the age of 14
(...) I felt treated like someone who is not even a human being (...) "
I have had
nervous breakdown
and they have put me on the black list."