By ANDREW DALTON (AP Entertainment Writer)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman has filed a lawsuit against director Roman Polanski, claiming he raped her in his house when she was under 18 in 1973.
The woman made the allegations, which the 90-year-old Polanski has denied, at a news conference with her lawyer, Gloria Allred, on Tuesday.
The story is similar to the still-unresolved criminal sexual assault case in Los Angeles that caused Polanski to flee to Europe in 1978, where he has stayed since.
The woman who brought the civil lawsuit said she went to dinner with Polanski, who knew she was under 18, in 1973, a few months after meeting him at a party. She said Polanski gave her tequila shots at his house before and during dinner.
She said she felt dazed, and Polanski drove her home. She next remembers lying next to him in his bed.
“He told her that he wanted to have sexual intercourse with her,” the lawsuit states. “Although she felt dazed, the plaintiff told Polanski ‘No.’ She told him, ‘Please don’t do this.’ He ignored her pleas. Polanski took off the plaintiff’s clothes and proceeded to rape her, causing her a lot of physical and emotional pain.”
Defense attorney Alexander Rufus-Isaacs said in an email Tuesday that Polanski “strongly denies the allegations made against him in the lawsuit and believes that the appropriate place to resolve this case is in the courts.”
The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in June under a California law that temporarily allowed people to file claims of childhood sexual abuse after the statute of limitations had expired. Under the law, Polanski could not be named initially, so the lawsuit was not reported on by media outlets. It seeks damages to be determined at trial.
A judge has since given the plaintiff approval to use his name in the case. The judge on Friday set a 2025 trial date.
In his legal response to the lawsuit, Polanski’s attorney denies all of its allegations and asserts that the lawsuit is unconstitutional because it relies on a law not passed until 1990.
The woman first came forward with her story in 2017, after the woman in Polanski’s criminal case asked a judge to dismiss the charges, which he declined to do.
At the time, the woman who has now filed the civil lawsuit gave her first name and middle initial and said she was 16 at the time of the assault.
In the lawsuit and at Tuesday’s news conference, she did not give her name and said only that she was a minor at the time. She spoke only briefly.
“It took me a really long time to decide to file this suit against Mr. Polanski, but I finally did make that decision,” she said. “I want to file it to obtain justice and accountability.”
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused.
At least three other women have come forward with stories of Polanski sexually abusing them.
A major figure in the New Hollywood film renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s, Polanski directed movies including “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.”
In 1977, he faced charges of drugging and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl. He made a deal with the prosecutors to admit guilt to a lesser charge of illegal sexual activity and avoid further prison time beyond what he already served in jail.
However, Polanski was worried that the judge might not honor the agreement before it was confirmed, so he fled to Europe in 1978. Recently released transcripts from 2022 show a prosecutor stating that the judge had indeed planned to reject the deal.
For years, Polanski’s legal team has been trying to close the case and remove the international arrest warrant that limited his movements to France, Switzerland, and Poland, where authorities rejected U.S. requests for his extradition.
He continued to create movies and received an Oscar for best director for “The Pianist” in 2003. However, in 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled him after the #MeToo movement gained traction.
