This will be the third time that Roman Polanski has faced justice.
Tried in California in 1977 for illicit sexual relations with a 13-year-old minor (Samantha Geimer), then last Tuesday in Paris for defamation against Charlotte Lewis (who accuses him of having raped her in 1983 and whose "lie" he denounced odious"), the filmmaker will be tried again in California on August 4, 2025. The complainant claims to have been the victim of sexual assault on a minor in 1973. Accusations that the director, now 90 years old, contested again this Wednesday March 13.
Who is the complainant?
She attacks Polanski under the name “Jane Doe,” “to protect her privacy,” according to her complaint.
“Jane Doe” is the name given to people in the United States who are unidentified or who wish to remain anonymous.
During the press conference held by her lawyer Gloria Allred on Tuesday, March 12, Jane Doe only uttered these few words: “I just want to say that I waited a long time to testify against Mr. Polanski, but I I finally decided to do it to obtain justice and to obtain accountability.
With long blond hair, light eyes framed by black-rimmed glasses and a black suit jacket over a printed blouse, the complainant then listened to Gloria Allred answer questions from journalists.
This is not the first time “Jane Doe” has appeared publicly.
On August 15, 2017, Gloria Allred had already given a press conference in Los Angeles with the person who was then called “Robin” or “Robin M.”… Without us knowing if this is her real first name.
At the time, Robin said she was "sexually assaulted" by Roman Polanski in 1973 when she was 16.
She did not give further details, but specified that she had decided to break her silence when she learned that Samantha Geimer was asking to close her case.
Asked this Tuesday about her client's age at the time of the alleged facts, Allred confirmed that she was “absolutely a minor” at the time.
“We will be more precise in due time,” she said.
Jane Doe, who, according to her complaint, resides in California, is now approximately 67 years old.
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After Samantha Geimer in March 1977, then Charlotte Lewis in May 2010, Robin was, in August 2017, the third woman to accuse Roman Polanski of rape.
She will be followed, in October 2017, by Renate Langer and Marianne Barnard, then, in November 2019, by Valentine Monnier.
What does she accuse Polanski of?
In her complaint, filed on June 16 in California and delivered to Roman Polanski on September 5 in Paris, Jane Doe says that she met the Franco-Polish director at a party in 1973. A few months later, Polanski would have invited her to dinner.
She allegedly found him at his home in Los Angeles, where he served her two shots of tequila.
Roman Polanski then allegedly took her by car to a restaurant where he ordered her more tequila.
Feeling ill, the complainant went to the toilet where she became ill.
Jane Doe claims that she then told the filmmaker that she needed to get some fresh air and that he met her outside and walked her home.
She doesn't remember how she got from the car to Polanski's house, but she says the director took her to his room and she passed out on his bed.
When she woke up, she describes, he lay down next to her and told her he wanted to have sex with her.
Stunned, she would have replied “No.
Please don’t do this.”
Despite this, he allegedly stripped her naked and raped her, causing her “immense physical and emotional suffering”.
According to Jane Doe, Polanski knew at the time that she was underage.
Who is his lawyer?
This is Gloria Allred, a very media lawyer aged 82.
This American specialist in women's rights is also a radio and television commentator.
In 1976, the woman who was raped in Mexico ten years earlier founded a reference firm with two partners on issues of sexual harassment and rape.
Allred was already Charlotte Lewis's lawyer in 2010, when the British actress accused Roman Polanski of raping her in 1983, two years before the filming of the film "Pirates".
Since then, she has defended twenty-nine of the fifty women who accused actor Bill Cosby of drugging and then raping them.
She also represented two of the women who accused Harvey Weinstein and had a client Summer Zervos, a former reality TV contestant who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in 2007. A sign of her popularity: Gloria Allred had right to his own character in the series “The Simpsons” and “South Park”.
How will the trial take place and what does Polanski risk?
The trial awaiting Roman Polanski will begin on August 4 before a jury and will last ten days.
It is a civil process, that is to say intended to settle disputes between private persons.
The filmmaker can only be ordered to pay financial compensation to the complainant.
During her press conference, Gloria Allred explained that it was too late to sue criminally, but a recent law allowed Jane Doe to sue civilly for these very old facts.
Jane Doe is therefore claiming damages, without a precise amount.
Her complaint specifies that she “suffered and continues to suffer from physical injuries, severe emotional distress”, mentioning in particular “humiliation”, “depression”, “anxiety” and “economic harm”.
Remember that in 1993, Roman Polanski was ordered to pay Samantha Geimer a sum estimated at 500,000 euros.
As his lawyer, Delphine Meillet, confirmed to us, Roman Polanski does not intend to attend this trial, which can be held in his absence.
In fact, if he entered American soil, the director would be immediately arrested.
Indeed, in 1977, when he was sentenced to 90 days in prison after pleading guilty to illicit sexual relations with a 13-year-old minor (Samantha Geimer), he learned that the judge wanted to sentence him again.
Polanski then took a plane to Europe.
Since then, he has never returned to the United States and is considered a fugitive by American justice.
The USA also tried to have him extradited in 2010 and then in 2014. In vain.
What does Roman Polanski say?
In 2017, when Robin publicly accused him, Polanski responded through his lawyer that he did not know “what it was.”
This Wednesday, the filmmaker again denied these accusations in a press release: “Roman Polanski learned of the civil proceedings brought against him in the United States by a person whose identity he does not know and who declares that he would have attacked in 1973. This type of procedure, specific to the State of California, allows a complainant to make the worst accusations after more than half a century, without the slightest proof or justification.
Roman Polanski contests these incongruous accusations with the greatest firmness.
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“Roman Polanski does not know this woman, whose denunciations are anything but detailed and who has, for the moment at least, produced no document,” Delphine Meillet tells us.
I remind you that he is 90 years old and I deplore this relentlessness on his person.
» The director's lawyer also wishes to invoke the judgment rendered by the Krakow court in 2015, which opposed the extradition of the filmmaker.
“This decision emphasized that Roman Polanski had served the sentence initially planned and considered that the extradition request was only intended to humiliate him,” she says.