Roman Polanski Victorious in British Rape Accuser’s Defamation Case
A court in Paris ruled Tuesday that Roman Polanski did not defame a British actress who accused him of raping her when she was 16.
The case was connected to a 2019 interview with magazine Paris Match in which the director, now 90, said Charlotte Lewis had lied about the alleged sexual assault. Lewis, 56, first made her allegations public in 2010, saying she’d been sexually abused by Polanski “in the worst possible way” in 1983 during a casting session for his film Pirates.
The ruling Tuesday did not rule on the truth of the rape allegation but instead solely concerned whether Polanski’s comments in the interview constituted defamation, according to the Associated Press. He had denied the charges.