Oscar winning director Polanski will avoid US trial after settling child rape lawsuit

Veteran film director Roman Polanski has reached a settlement which will help him avoid a trial over an alleged rape of a child in 1973.

Polanski, who is 91, is famous for a raft of films stretching back decades including 1968 horror film Rosemary’s Baby and 1974 noir classic Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson.

But he fled the US decades ago after admitting to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old.

He had been due to take the stand in a civil case next August.

The lawsuit claimed Polanski took a then-teenager – named anonymously in filings as Jane Doe – to dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

The filing also alleged that he gave her tequila, and when she began to feel dizzy, drove her to his home, where she alleged he sexually assaulted her.

“She told him: ‘Please don’t do this,’” the plaintiff’s lawyer, Gloria Allred told reporters in March, saying Polanski ignored her pleas and that the alleged assault caused the plaintiff “tremendous physical, emotional pain and suffering”.

But the case was “settled in the summer to the parties’ mutual satisfaction and has now been formally dismissed,” Polanski’s lawyer, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs told Agence France-Presse (AFP)on Tuesday.

The suit sought unspecified damages and was filed before the expiration of a California law that allowed for an extended window for claims against the alleged perpetrators of sex crimes.

Polanski, who won the Best Director Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist, has had a controversial career in Hollywood.
He was arrested in the US for drugging and raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977. He pleaded guilty to statutory rape and went on to serve 42 days in jail as part of a plea bargain.

He fled to France when ordered to serve the remainder of his 90-day sentence. Attempts by the US to extradite him from Europe have been unsuccessful.

“I don’t carry feelings of anger towards Polanski,” Geimer told People magazine in 1997.

“I even have some sympathy for him, what with his mother dying in a concentration camp and then his wife Sharon Tate being murdered by Charles Manson’s people and spending the last 20 years as a fugitive.

“Life was hard for him, just like it was for me. He did something really gross to me, but it was the media that ruined my life.”

Years prior, the filmmaker's brief marriage to the actress became one of the most famous relationships in Hollywood history.

It ended tragically in 1969 when Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with the couple's first child, was murdered in a horrific stabbing at their Los Angeles-area home by followers of cult leader Manson.

In March 2020, Polanski’s last film, An Officer and a Spy, won the Best Picture César Award (France's equivalent to the Best Picture Oscar) as well as the prize for Best Director.

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