Roman Polanski Reaches Settlement Over Alleged Sexual Assault of Minor in 1973

Film director Roman Polanski has reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit related to the alleged sexual assault of a minor, Variety and French publication Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. The suit was filed Los Angeles County Superior Court in June 2023, and was scheduled to go to trial in August 2025.

His lawyer, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, told AFP on Tuesday that the case was “settled in the summer to the parties’ mutual satisfaction and has now been formally dismissed.”

The woman’s attorney, Gloria Allred, confirmed to Variety that “a settlement of claims was agreed to by the parties to their mutual satisfaction.”

In the lawsuit, the woman identified as Jane Doe claimed that she met Polanski at a party in 1973 when she was a minor. She alleged she met him a second time months later at his Benedict Canyon home in Southern California and that afterwards he took her to dinner, gave her shots of tequila, and brought her back to his house.

“Plaintiff remembers waking up in Defendant’s bed with him lying in the bed next to her,” the lawsuit stated. “He told her that he wanted to have sex with her. Plaintiff, though groggy, told Defendant ‘No.’ She told him, ‘Please don’t do this.’”

The woman came forward in 2017, identifying only as Robin M. at the time, and claimed during a press conference in Los Angeles that Polanski “sexually victimized” her when she was 16-years-old. The woman said she told a friend about what happened “the day after the assault” but didn’t tell her parents. “The reason, with this exception, that I kept it to myself is that I didn’t want my father to do something that might cause him to go to prison for the rest of his life,” she said.

Robin M. said that she decided to come forward when she learned that Samantha Geimer, who Polanski admitted to the statutory rape of when she was 13, planned to ask a Los Angeles Supreme Court Judge to resolve the criminal pursuit once and for all against Polanski. “This infuriated me,” Robin M. said in a statement. “I am speaking out now so that Samantha and the will know that she was not the only minor that Roman Polanski victimized.”

In a separate statement submitted at the time of the original filing, Polanski’s attorney said that, “Mr. Polanski strenuously denies the allegations in the lawsuit and believes that the proper place to try this case is in the courts.”

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Polanski has faced several sexual assault and rape allegations over the years, including claims leveled by the German actress Renate Langer, the French actress Valentine Monnier, and the American artist Marianne Barnard. He has denied the claims. After pleading guilty in Los Angeles to having sex with Geimer when she was a minor in 1977, he fled back to his home country of France, which does not extradite his citizens.

In May, he was cleared of defamation charges in France in a case tied to a rape allegation brought by the British actress Charlotte Lewis.