LA DA meets actress who claims Polanski sex abuse

CharlotteLewis-RomanPolanski-SexAllegations 1
British actress Charlotte Lewis and her attorney Gloria Allred, rear left, are shown during a news conference in Los Angeles Friday, May 14, 2010. Lewis alleges that director Roman Polanski sexually victimized her in Paris when she was 16. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
 
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Los Angeles County prosecutors have met with a British actress who claims she was sexually abused by director Roman Polanski in his Paris apartment when she was 16 - years before she appeared in one of his movies.
 
Charlotte Lewis, 42, said Friday that the filmmaker abused her "in the worst possible way" sometime in the 1980s.
 
Lewis provided no evidence to support her claims, and her attorney, Gloria Allred, did not permit her to answer questions during a news conference in her office.
 
However, Allred said the woman provided evidence to a police detective and officials from the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. She refused to provide specifics and also refused to answer questions about whether her client's allegations involved drugs or rape.
 
"Our detectives did conduct the interview but the department has not begun an investigation," said police spokesman Richard French. He did not know when the interview was conducted.
 
It was unclear what year the alleged assault took place.
 
"He took advantage of me and I have lived with the effects of his behaviour ever since it occurred," said Lewis, reading from a prepared statement at a news conference in her lawyer's office. "All I want is justice."
Allred said that, to her knowledge, no criminal complaint or lawsuit was made in France over the alleged assault.
 
The duty officer for the French Justice Ministry said late Friday night that he was not aware whether the British actress had filed a complaint in France about her allegation.
 
A statement released by Polanski 's U.S. legal team said his attorneys had no information about the allegations that were made at the press conference "but we do know that our district attorney continues to refuse to provide the Swiss government with accurate and complete information relevant to the extradition issue."
 
Polanski, the Oscar-winning director of "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and "The Pianist," is under house arrest at his Swiss chateau in connection with a 33-year-old case.
 
Polanski was accused of drugging a 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of Quaalude and raping her at Jack Nicholson's house in Los Angeles in 1977. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse but fled to France before sentencing and remained a fugitive until Swiss authorities arrested him on Sept. 26 on a U.S. warrant as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival.
 
Lewis said she came forward because she heard that Polanski was fighting extradition to the United States and "that his legal team is portraying his previous offense against a minor as an isolated instance."
 
Allred said she doesn't plan any legal action right now, such as a lawsuit, but believes the allegations would be relevant when Polanski is sentenced.
Her client is ready to testify if necessary, she said.
 
"If the judge believes these claims, it could certainly have an impact on the court's decision," she said.
 
Lewis played a role in Polanski 's 1986 movie, "Pirates." She's also credited with a role in the 1986 movie "The Golden Child" and small roles in other movies and TV shows.
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Associated Press Writer Debbie Seward in Paris contributed to this report.

Comments

starship said…
Is Polanski's New Accuser Lying?
by Eric Pape
May 17, 2010 | 3:36pm
Getty Images A 1999 interview actress Charlotte Lewis gave about her affair with Roman Polanski contradicts her accusations last week and reveals a troubled past.

Charlotte Lewis, the British actress who came forward last week and claimed that Roman Polanski had raped her twice in his Parisian penthouse on the Avenue Montaigne when she was 16 years old, has been directly contradicted by a source who seems at least as reliable as she is: Charlotte Lewis.

The now-42-year-old Lewis made headlines at a May 14 press conference in Los Angeles with her attorney Gloria Allred, when she said that the fugitive director had abused her “in the worst way possible” a quarter century ago. Polanski remains under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad as Swiss authorities contemplate whether or not to extradite him to Los Angeles over a 33-year-old statutory rape case involving a 13-year-old girl. Lewis also gave a statement to legal authorities in L.A., and said that she hopes that Polanski “gets what he deserves.”

“I knew that Roman had done something bad in the United States, but I wanted to be his mistress,” Lewis said, according to Liberation. “I wanted him probably more than he wanted me.”

But in 1999, Lewis gave a very different account of events in an interview with Britain’s News of the World. In that interview, which was unearthed by the French daily Liberation on May 17, Lewis asserted that she actually had a six-month tryst with the Polish-born filmmaker when she was 17. “I knew that Roman had done something bad in the United States, but I wanted to be his mistress,” Lewis said, according to Liberation. “I wanted him probably more than he wanted me.”

In that 1999 interview, Lewis never mentioned any sexual abuse and she said that their relationship ended when Polanski introduced her to Warren Beatty, who was scouting for the film Ishtar, and she claimed that they soon began an affair. The earlier interview also detailed a deeply troubled past, including her forays into prostitution at age 14 while Lewis was still in Catholic school. And Lewis spoke of her cocaine addiction and hinted at flings with an array of celebrities—she has been linked to her Golden Child co-star Eddie Murphy, Mickey Rourke, and Charlie Sheen.

There were immediate questions about the validity of Lewis’ recent allegations, given that she was cast in Polanski’s 1986 film Pirates, and appeared at the Cannes film festival on his arm years after the alleged incident. And in an interview the year of the film's release, Lewis asserted, “I’d love to have had a romantic relationship with [Polanski], and a physical one. You can’t help falling in love with him. But he didn’t want me that way.”

Today, though, Lewis blames the 76-year-old director for her inability to enjoy a healthy relationship with a man, and for her past bouts of bulimia, according to a May 17 interview with the Mail on Sunday. When the newspaper asked her why she is speaking out now, she said it is to counter pro-Polanski elements in Hollywood, not for hush money.

According to Lewis’ account in the Mail, Polanski, who was three times her age when they met, told the aspiring starlet that he slept with every actress he worked with. “That’s how I get to know them, how I mold them,” she claims he said. Lewis fended off his alleged groping and left, but later returned to him after calculating the opportunity that might otherwise slip away at a time when her family was struggling financially. Two weeks later, she returned to Paris for a screen test with him, and she was cast in Pirates.

One of Polanski’s French lawyers says that they are contemplating legal action against Lewis.
B.J. Thompson said…
"...contemplating legal action..."

code for>>>you're hurting our case so we'll try to smear ya in public but know we don't have a legal leg to stand on...

More to the point would be why other women have NOT stepped forward...probably because of the treatment they would receive, not unlike what Lewis is receiving...

Hollywood then, and for the better part now, is an Old Boy's Club and unless you own a production company like Sandra Bullock, you have to suck up to these director/producers in order to get parts. As far as I can see, to be an actress IS to be a prostitute...and Roman probably counted on that.

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