Filmmaker Roman Polanski was indicted for defamation, for comments questioning the veracity of the accusation of sexual abuse brought against him by actress Charlotte Lewis, Agence France-Presse learned, Friday, October 8, from their lawyers, confirming information from BFM-TV.
Me Hervé Temime, lawyer for Roman Polanski, confirmed the indictment of his client, stressing that it is a measure ” Automatique “ in defamation matters. Saying to himself “Perfectly calm about the fate of these lawsuits”, he added :
“The process and the hearing will allow us to rectify a large number of lies and false accusations. What is not audible to the media may appear in court and be debated contradictorily. “
In a long interview published by Paris Match in December 2019, Mr. Polanski ” consider that [Charlotte Lewis] is a liar, assimilates her to a storyteller “, lamented the lawyer for the British actress, Me Benjamin Chouai, who filed a complaint with the constitution of civil party in March 2020.
Targeted by other rape charges
Charlotte Lewis, born in 1967, had appeared in the film Pirates, directed by Roman Polanski in 1986. In Los Angeles, in 2010, she claimed to have been “Sexually abused” by the filmmaker, in the latter’s Parisian apartment in the early 1980s, when she was 16 years old.
But in his interview at Paris Match from 2019, Mr Polanski, targeted by other rape charges, referred to an interview she gave in 1999 to a British tabloid, News of the World, to meet “Contradictions” and one “Heinous lie” from Charlotte Lewis. In particular, he underlined the following sentence: “I knew Roman had done something wrong in America, but I wanted to be his mistress (…). I probably wanted him more than he wanted. “
However, the actress challenged in 2010 the veracity of the words. “Number of quotes attributed to me in the article by News of the World are not exact “, she had said.
A possible trial before the 17e chamber of the Paris Criminal Court could have to wait several months, or even several years, because the delays for hearing this chamber are long.