Roman Polanski acquitted after being sued for defamation by actress Charlotte Lewis

Sued for defamation by British actress Charlotte Lewis, filmmaker Roman Polanski was acquitted on Tuesday May 14 by the Paris judicial court. The 90-year-old director, accused of sexual assault and rape by several women, including Charlotte Lewis, had described himself as“odious lie” the latter’s accusations.

The judges of the 17^e correctional chamber, specialized in press matters, did not have to rule on whether Roman Polanski raped the British actress or not, but only whether or not the filmmaker made abusive use of his freedom of expression. expression in an interview published by Paris Match in December 2019.

In this interview, the director of Rosemary’s Baby had declared: “The first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever pointing out her contradictions. »

The remarks pursued relate to a “value judgment on the versatile character of the civil party”estimated the magistrates of the 17^e bedroom. The court discerned “a significant gap between admiration and recognition [de la comédienne] towards the director, which she publicly spoke about until 2010, and the denunciation of the violent nature of their relationship at the time when she decided to participate in the vindictiveness committed against him”. According to the court, there is, in the remarks pursued, “no fact likely to harm the honor and consideration of the civil party”.

In 2010, during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, Charlotte Lewis recounted having been attacked during a casting organized at Roman Polanski’s house in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 years old. .

“It’s a very sad day”

“It’s an important decision”welcomed at the end of the hearing M^e Delphine Meillet, lawyer for Roman Polanski. “We can doubt the word of an accuser”, she insisted. For Roman Polanski’s lawyers, their client was “thrown out to pasture in the public square” In “the stifling context of #metoo”the movement for the liberation of women’s speech.

Charlotte Lewis, in tears, expressed her “sadness”. “It’s a very sad day for women who denounce their attacker,” did she say. His lawyer, M^e Benjamin Chouai, specified that his client would ” probably “ appeal. ” It is not finished “he warned.

To illustrate the “contradictions” according to the complainant, Roman Polanski’s lawyers had unearthed during the trial an interview given by the actress in 1999 to the tabloid News of the World in which she expressed her admiration for the director, who in 1986 gave her a role in his film Pirates.

Roman Polanski, who notably won an Oscar and a Palme d’Or at Cannes for The pianisthas been accused of sexual assault and rape by around ten women throughout his career, assertions that he has always contested and which have not stopped him from working.

He has been considered a fugitive in the United States for more than forty years, after a conviction for “illegal sexual relations” with a 13-year-old minor, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer).