New allegations of child rape have surfaced against Roman Polanski, a film director who famously fled the United States to escape imprisonment after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old, Samantha Geimer, in 1977.
Renate Langer, a 61-year-old former German actress, told Swiss police that Polanski raped her in Gstaad in 1972 when she was 15, according to The New York Times. Langer is the fourth woman to say that Polanski sexual assaulted her during her teen years.
It is not yet clear whether too much time has passed for Langer to legally pursue a case against Polanski, The New York Times reported. Switzerland no longer has a statute of limitations pertaining to child sex abuse cases, but laws do limit prosecution of crimes from many years ago.
Langer said she did not report the rape when it happened because she feared her parents, who passed away recently, would react badly, The New York Times reported.
Polanski has lived in France, Poland, and Switzerland since fleeing the U.S. before sentencing for his conviction. None of these countries have been willing to extradite him, and his lawyers have been fighting for years for his international arrest warrant to be canceled, The New York Times reported.
The film director recently spoke out during a rare press interview at the Zurich Film Festival, saying, “It’s over. I pleaded guilty,” in reference to his conviction in 1977, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Polanski’s attorneys have disputed all other allegations, and did not comment on the new accusations, The New York Times reported.
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