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Third woman claims abuse by Polanski

Author
Reuters,
Publish Date
Wed, 16 Aug 2017, 6:26AM
A third woman has alleged she was sexually victimised by film director Roman Polanski when she was a minor. Getty Images.
A third woman has alleged she was sexually victimised by film director Roman Polanski when she was a minor. Getty Images.

Third woman claims abuse by Polanski

Author
Reuters,
Publish Date
Wed, 16 Aug 2017, 6:26AM

A third woman has alleged she was sexually victimised by film director Roman Polanski when she was a minor.

Lawyer Gloria Allred has announced that the unidentified woman and Allred will hold a press conference on Tuesday in Los Angeles.

The allegation has emerged 40 years after Polanski raped 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. Polanski pleaded guilty to raping Geimer in 1979 and was released from prison after 42 days, but fled the country before sentencing in Los Angeles.

He has lived as a fugitive abroad ever since and has been seeking to dispose of the case so he can travel without fear of arrest. Polanski is now 83.

In April, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon rejected Polanski's latest effort to be tried in absentia, ruling that Polanski must first return to the US and submit to the court's jurisdiction before the case can be resolved.

In June, Geimer urged Gordon to resolve the case.

"He got arrested. I knew he was sorry the next day," she said after the hearing. "I was sure he instantly regretted what he had done and wished it hadn't happened. It just wasn't as traumatic for me as everyone would like to believe it was. I was a young sexually active teenager and it was a scary thing, but it was not an uncommon thing. I understood much worse things happened to people. So, I was just not as traumatised as everybody thinks I should have been."

Charlotte Lewis, who is also represented by Allred, accused Polanski earlier this year of sexually assaulting her when she was 16 years old before working with him on the 1986 film Pirates.

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