Roman Polanski has reached a judicial agreement that avoids the trial he was going to face in Los Angeles in August 2025. Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, the lawyer for the filmmaker 91 years old, has assured the French news agency AFP that the case has been dismissed. “The parties reached a mutually satisfactory agreement during the summer,” said the lawyer. The victim states in her civil lawsuit, filed in June 2023 in the Californian courts, that she was sexually abused by the director in 1973, when she was 16 years old. The agreement has been confirmed by Gloria Allredthe prosecution’s attorney, and a leading activist at the center of the #MeToo movement.
Neither Allred nor Rufus-Isaacs have given details about the legal settlement, nor have they reported the amount paid to compensate for the damage. Polanski, who has lived in Paris since leaving the United States, had “vehemently rejected” the accusations. The filmmaker was notified of the new lawsuit last March. His lawyer then stated that the accusations would be settled in court and not before public opinion.
The events detailed in the lawsuit occurred one night in 1973. Polanski then invited the victim to a Los Angeles restaurant after meeting her at a party. During dinner, the director ordered tequila shots to the table even though he knew that his guest “was under 18 years old.” After drinking the distillate, the complainant felt dizzy and nauseated. She told Polanski that she was not feeling well and asked him to take her home. The director of chinatown He took her, instead, to his residence in Benedict Canyon, a neighborhood in the mountainous area of Los Angeles.
According to the complaint, the victim lost consciousness upon arriving at Polanski’s house. When he came to, the director was next to him on his bed. “He told her that he wanted to have sex with her,” the lawsuit states. He began to remove her clothes and rape her even though the woman told him “No” and “Please don’t do it.” After this, he took her home. They never saw each other again after that, the document states.
The victim accompanied Allred at a press conference in 2017. The lawyer then identified the woman as Robin M. The lawsuit filed in 2023 did not include the names of either the victim or the defendant. The defense named Polanski as the alleged perpetrator at a July news conference in Los Angeles.
Polanski fled the United States in 1977 when he was released after spending six weeks in custody after pleading guilty to the rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer at Jack Nicholson’s home. His lawyers requested for decades that transcripts of the case, which had been secret for decades, be made public. That finally happened in 2022. It was then learned that 90 days in prison was the only sentence provided by Judge Laurence Rittenbad. The defense argued, hoping to end Polanski’s fugitive status, that the director has already served time for a relationship that was consensual. In 2023, the victim offered an interview to the French magazine Le Point in which she assured that what happened “was never a big problem” for her.
