Polish director Roman Polanski will be tried for alleged rape in August 2025, in a court in Los Angeles, in the United States of America. The case dates back to 1973 and the alleged victim was a minor at the time. The information is reported by North American media such as Variety,
“The judge has set a date for August 4, 2025 at 10 a.m. for a ten-day jury trial,” said Gloria Allred, a famous lawyer who represented women in similar allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein, in the eye of the storm of the #MeToo movement. , Jeffrey Epstein or actor Bill Cosby.
The complainant alleges that Polanski raped her in 1973, when she was 16 years old, in the house the filmmaker kept in Benedict Canyon, in the same North American city. According to the process, both met at a party months earlier. Polanski invited her to dinner at a restaurant and gave her shots of Tequila before and during the meal. Once at Polanski’s house, the teenager fell asleep in bed.
“The complainant remembers waking up in the defendant’s bed with him lying in bed next to her,” states the lawsuit, cited by the North American press. “He told her he wanted to have sex with her. The complainant, although intoxicated, told the accused ‘No’. She told him, ‘Please don’t do that.’” The lawsuit accuses him of having undressed her and then raped her.
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Roman Polanski, eternal damnation and #MeToo
According to Variety, the alleged victim, who remains anonymous, spoke for the first time about the matter in August 2017, at a press conference with lawyer Gloria Allred. At the time, Allred said the complainant, then identified as Robin M., was 16 years old when the alleged sexual assault occurred. Using the name Jane Doe, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit in June last year, with the case being filed in Los Angeles Superior Court under a California law that extends the statute of limitations for abuse crimes. childish. Polanski was notified of the legal action at his home in Paris, where he has lived since fleeing the United States more than 40 years ago.
“It took me a long time to decide this case against Mr. Polanski,” said the complainant in a Press conference this Tuesday, adding that he did so “to obtain justice and accountability”. Polanski’s lawyers denied the claim, writes Variety. “Mr. Polanski vehemently denies the allegations in the lawsuit and believes the appropriate place to try this case is in the courts,” said Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, the director’s lawyer.
Author of films such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), The Night of Revenge (1994) or The pianist (2002), Polanski has already faced several accusations of sexual abuse, including in 1977, when he was arrested for the rape of teenager Samantha Geimer, in which he was found guilty and which culminated in his departure from the United States. Between 2017 and 2019, four other women accused the filmmaker of sexual abuse and three of them were teenagers at the time of the alleged crimes. One of the alleged victims, Marianne Barnard, was raped when she was ten years old.
The director, currently 90 years old, is currently facing another trial in France. In this process, British actress Charlotte Lewis claims to have been a sexual victim of the director in 1983, at the age of 16.