A Paris courtroom has acquitted director Roman Polanski of defaming a British actor who accused him of raping her when she was a youngster.
In 2019, he instructed Paris Match journal that Charlotte Lewis had lied about being sexually assaulted by him 4 many years in the past.
Ms Lewis, 56, introduced the case in opposition to the 90-year-old filmmaker.
She instructed the courtroom in March that she had change into the sufferer of a “smear marketing campaign” that “practically destroyed” her.
Mr Polanski fled the US in 1978 after admitting having intercourse with a thirteen-year-old lady.
A number of different ladies have since come ahead with claims that Mr Polanski abused them. He denies all claims in opposition to him.
In 2010, Ms Lewis accused the director of assaulting her in “the worst attainable means” when she was 16 in 1983 in Paris, after she had travelled there for a casting. She later appeared in his 1986 movie Pirates.
However in an interview with the Paris Match journal, the France-born filmmaker claimed it was a “heinous lie”. He didn’t attend the trial.
Paris Match reported that in the course of the interview he allegedly learn from a 1999 article within the now-defunct British tabloid newspaper Information of the World, which quoted Lewis as saying: “I used to be fascinated by him, and I wished to be his lover.”
Ms Lewis has mentioned the quotes attributed to her in that interview weren’t correct.
She filed a criticism for defamation, and the movie director was mechanically charged beneath French legislation.
