It is the interview given by Roman Polanski to Paris Match on December 11 that prompted the legal action. In this article, published a few weeks after a new rape accusation against him, the director was notably questioned about the actress Charlotte Lewis, who accuses him of having raped her in 1982. While the journalists of the weekly asked Polanski what "interest" Charlotte Lewis might have in accusing her wrongly, the filmmaker replied: "What do I know? Frustration? We would have to question shrinks, scientists, historians, whatever. "To the question" Have you tried to talk to him since his accusations? ", Roman Polanski retorted then:" Why, to fight? On the contrary, I would like her out of my life. "
According to 20 minutes and as confirmed to us by Maître Benjamin Chouai, Charlotte Lewis' lawyer, it was after reading these words that the actress decided to file a defamation complaint against X, mentioning the director and Paris Match. The now 52-year-old actress believes that Polanski's interview “undermines his honor and his consideration”. At the beginning of March, Charlotte Lewis therefore appointed her lawyer to become a civil party to the dean of the investigating judges of the Paris court. This should lead to the opening of a judicial investigation.
A report was also sent to the service of the public prosecutor of Paris, in which Charlotte Lewis accuses Roman Polanski of having raped her in 1982. “If Charlotte Lewis filed a complaint for defamation, it is also so that Roman Polanski s 'expresses on these facts,' says Maître Benjamin Chouai.
Words discredited by the tabloids
In May 2010, Charlotte Lewis said she was raped by the filmmaker in her apartment on Avenue Montaigne, in Paris, when she was 16 years old. Her testimony was quickly discredited by the emergence of an article in the English tabloid News of the World, in which the actress recounted having been a prostitute at the age of 14. The one who shot in "Pirates" in 1985 assured that at that time she "dreamed of becoming Polanski's mistress". Later, the British actress explained that her words had been invented or distorted.
In a long interview with L'Obs last December, Charlotte Lewis reported a "violent campaign to discredit her", and reiterated her accusations of rape. Since in 1977, Roman Polanski pleaded guilty and was sentenced in the United States for illegal sex with a 13-year-old underage, the director has been accused of rape by several women. Last November, it was the French Valentine Monnier who declared in our columns that she had been raped by Polanski in 1975 in her chalet in Gstaad, when she was 18 years old. The facts of which Polanski is accused being all time-barred, the filmmaker is not yet the subject of any legal proceedings, apart from that, still in progress, in the United States, which he fled in 1977.